Dimmi Domanda is adapted from an idea I saw on The Language Gym (a great resource for this kind of thing!). Using DimmiDeck, or even scrap paper on which the students have written or drawn the relevant vocabulary, students practise question forms and short answers in a simple, fun and frantic card collecting game. Great for kids and teens!
What You Need
1x Deck of DimmiDeck Cards – choose at least 15 or 20 pairs of jobs ideally. (The vocab topic can be adapted based on your class, but for this explanation we’ll use jobs as the topic).
Setup
Choose a question form that you want to practice and marry it with one of the vocabulary topics included in the DimmiDeck. Good examples could be ‘are you a… Doctor/Fireman etc’ or ‘are you wearing…’ and so on. Some more ideas are provided in the notes section below.
Lesson Plan
- Refresh the students knowledge of the necessary structures for the activity. For this example we want to practise ‘are you a… (job)’ and the short form answers yes I am/no I’m not. You could also use the same vocabulary topic for ‘do you work in a school/hospital/police station’ if appropriate or desired.Recycle also the jobs vocabulary if necessary using the cards.
- Deal the cards out to the students evenly. Tell them that the goal is to collect as many cards as possible.
- Model an example for the class. You ask the student ‘are you a…’ and then a job. For example, ‘are you a doctor?’. If they have a doctor card, they reply ‘yes I am!’ and give you the card. Then you can ask again. If they don’t, they reply ‘no I’m not’ and it’s their turn to ask.
- Once each student has had the chance to ask and take cards from their partner they must walk around the room doing the same task with all the other students in continuation until somebody runs out of cards.
It’s a good idea for the teacher to get involved in this game. Kids usually get quite frantic running around trying to ask everybody for their cards and trying to avoid answering questions for fear of losing theirs. This is all well and good, but to really be able to monitor effectively you should involve yourself and make sure to have an exchange early with each student if possible, and offer them on the spot correction. You can then sit back and monitor as a group to ensure the correction has been taken on board.
Notes
This game can be great for getting kids to practice their question forms and short answers, and you don’t even need DimmiDeck to do it (although we’d argue it adds a lot to it!). Simply choose vocabulary that fits the structure you’re looking to teach, and have the kids write the words or draw the images on bits of scrap paper.
Some ideas…
Do you…? Yes I do/no I don’t using sports and activities
Can you…? Yes I can, no I can’t using sports, musical instruments etc
Have you ever…? Yes I have, no I haven’t using destinations, extreme sports, strange food etc
