Touchy Feely Language - literally!

One learning style that probably could to be more focussed on in the LOTE classroom is that of the kinaesthic learner. According to Wikipedia, Kinesthetic learning is a teaching and learning style in which learning takes place by the student actually carrying out a physical activity, rather than listening to a lecture or merely watching a demonstration. Students with this predominant learning style are natural discovery learners; they have realizations through doing, as opposed to having thought first before initiating action.

How do you get students to touch and feel language and to create it in order to help them engage with it and learn it? Here are some suggestions:

1. Match sticks and /or playdough Give each student a bunch of coloured match size sticks (you can find these in the local $2 shop or similar places) or a lump of playdough (local supermarket) and ask them to make whatever word you say as quickly as they can. This works really well for Chinese characters. If you are teaching a non-character based language, you might get the students to make the whole word, or just the first and last letters, or if the language has any sort of accents and inflections, you might get them just to make that part.

2. Air writing When you are introducing students to new words or characters, you could get them to write it in the air rather than straight on to a page in their books. It provides a different and often amusing way for students to start ‘feeling’ the shape of the new words or characters and allows those kineasthetic learners to move their whole arm which may help them to make more sense of what they are learning.

3. Character Relay This works really well with Chinese characters or shorter words. Divide students in to four teams, each lining up facing the board. Students are not allowed to turn around or to speak. As the teacher, go to the back and show the student at the back of each line a flashcard with a character or word on it. The student must then ‘write’ the character or word on the back of the student in front of them, who in turn writes on the back of the student in front of him or her, and so the message gets passed down the line. When it reaches the student at the front, that student must then either say the character or word, or rush to the board to write it first. The first team to correctly write or say the word or character gets a point.

As far as characters go, this game is good for getting students to pay attention to stroke order. It helps kinaesthetic learners by giving them an opportunity to stand up and move a bit more than they normally would when writing, which can be imporant for them.

4. Swat!

This is a flashcard game that involves fly swats. The class or group if divided into two teams. One student from each team takes a swat, comes to the middle and kneels beside the pool of flashcards that have been layed out. The teacher (or other students) then calls out one of the cards (in the LOTE or in English to test translation) and the student who wins that card is the one who swatted it first. Students should start with the swats held up beside their heads. This game can get furious and loud, but it’s great fun! I find that even the most reluctant students are very keen to get involved with this one. Do be careful that the only things that get swatted are the flashcards, not yourself or any of the students!

5. Human Sentences

You’ll need to make up some sentences on flashcards - putting one word per card. One word typed per A4 page on landscape layout works well. Then choose as many students as there are words in the sentence and give them each a card. Tell them in English what the sentence is and then let them move themselves into position, holding the flashcard up in front of them. An alternative is that you could have the class tell the students which order they need to be in. This activity tests students’ knowledge of sentence structure as well as giving them to opportunity to move around to build the sentence properly.

The above games and activities are from a book called ‘Lai Wan You Xi‘ written by Margaret Furay and Deborah Kessler, and published by the Curriculum Corporation. Lai Wan You Xi is the Chinese version. This book is also available for Indonesian (Ayo Bermain) and for Japanese (Asobo Manabo).

6. 10 second Human Characters or Objects

I have adapted this activity from a book called 101 Drama Games and Activities by David Farmer.

Get students in to groups of 4-6. Call out a character or object in your target language and give them 10 seconds to create it using using only the people in their group. This can be a highly entertaining activity and can be great for kinaesthetic leaners as they have to literally be part of building the word, character or object.

7. A Few Other Things to Do

• Get students to make words or characters out of strips of paper, gluing it to a piece of card and displaying it around the room.
• For those students who find it hard to sit still, you can get student to work in pairs - one sitting at a desk and one moving around the room to collect clues, or snippets of sentences that they have to bring back to the other student who then uses that information somehow. This could be good for some sort of dictation activity or sentence structure activity.
• If you have an Interactive Whiteboard, create slides that have sorting and matching activities where students can move things around the board.
• Put students in groups, giving each group a set of small bit of paper each with a character or word on it. (All groups need to have the same words). Then call out a sentence in either your target language or English and the students have to work together as a team to put the bits of paper in the correct order. Just moving things around a table rather than writing them down can do wonders to help the kinaesthetic learner.

If you’ve got any activities for kinaesthetic learners that you would like to share, please get in touch as I’d love to read them and include them on this site!

For more LOTE games check out the post called The Polish Monkey King and also the LOTE Games page.