Löffel

I tried playing Löffel (Spoons) for the first time this week with my German 2 students, and it was a big hit.  Every student was actively involved, and I had several requests to play again.  That definitely counts as a win!

I had read about using Spoons as a review game at Teaching to Inspire, which gives a really good overview and things to consider when designing your own game.

Only a few students were familiar with the card game Spoons, so it took a few rounds and explanations until everyone was clear on how to play, but after that they were off, practicing German vocabulary, and having fun.

I had made sets of 4 cards for each vocabulary word.  For example, there might be the German noun, the gender (der/die/das), a picture, and a sentence describing the word in German.  Students tried to get all 4 cards for one vocabulary word in their hand.  Our current topic is technology vocabulary, and you can access my cards here.

We had prepped for the game by working with the cards the previous class, just trying to sort them into sets of 4 so that they would have some familiarity with them before trying to collect them in a game situation.  I think this helped a lot, especially since this was their first time playing Löffel.

The student without a spoon at the end of a round wrote a letter in the word "Löffel" on his or her desk with a dry erase marker.  The goal was to be the person with the fewest letters at the end of the game.

You'll need to dedicate a good chunk of time to playing, especially the first time.  Probably because it was new to students, we spent 25-30 minutes playing and none of the players collected all of the letters in Löffel.  Still, I think it was time well spent because it really got everyone engaged with German to German vocabulary from the unit.  Not bad for the last month of school!