Good news everyone! The HLC has some new games, flash cards, and other great resources to bring some fun and diversity to your lessons! I’m excited that we can offer these new items and hope that you tutors find them helpful in delivering fun and powerful educational opportunities to your students or Conversation Corner sessions.
First of all, every item comes with directions on how to use them, and most have a variety of games and uses for you to try. We have flashcards, conversation starting dice, and board games. You may find that, depending on the level of your students, you may need to alter the rules of some of the games, or to help them out with the game. You may wish to request the item in advance of wanting to use it so that you can have a look and consider what adjustments you want to make to fit your needs.
Another piece of advice that I would give you is to consider every game as also being an opportunity for students to talk. Maybe a game or activity will veer off track, but as long as some good discussion is going on, then you are still “winning the game.” For example, you can use flash cards to build memory of vocabulary, but then you can go forward and ask questions about things related to the vocabulary. One of the sets of flashcards matches a bike and a helmet. After that, you could ask students if they ever learned to ride a bike, or if they remember when they learned. Then have them tell you a story about it. These activities will help expand horizons and teach you a lot about your student. Feel free to employ any creative, alternative use you can think of with any of these items. And, if you come up with something fun, let us know so we can share it with everyone!
I also want to point out that the circulation time for the games is three weeks instead of the six months that tutors get for other items. This is because we only have about three copies of each item, and we don’t want them all in use by the same three people for six months. If you would like to check out items again every so often, that is fine. We will have a holds list for items as well. Please be courteous to your fellow tutors and return the games (with all their pieces) promptly. We would really appreciate it.
I hope that you enjoy using the games, and if you have any suggestions for more resources like these, please feel free to let us now, and we will try to purchase them in the future! Of course, we will always be on the lookout for new ways to bring fun and educational experiences to our tutors and students…so keep an eye out!