A really great way to get students speaking in Spanish is to have them write dialogs. These are little conversations between two people where students can creatively and freely use all they have been learning in Spanish.
I have students work together in pairs to do this. They each write the dialog on paper so that when they are done, they can read it aloud or “act it out” with each person being one of the characters.
It is also fun to have them trade their dialog with another pair so they can act out a different dialog. Some students can act theirs or someone else’s out in front of the class voluntarily.
Another idea is to have pairs trade dialogs to do some proofing. Sometimes it helps to have others look over the work to catch grammatical errors they may have missed.
This is a great precursor to students writing skits. Skits are a bit more involved since they may have more than two characters plus a narrator. Â Also, they may involve using props for acting out. But they are a lot of fun and another great way to get students to bring all their Spanish learning to life!
Debbie
PS – The picture above is a short dialog written by two 6th grade Spanish for You! students during a 10 minute time period. Their dialog is unedited.