The document outlines various activity ideas structured around the 5 C's of language learning: interpersonal, interpretive, presentational, cultural, connections, comparisons, and communities. It includes specific center activities for small groups that promote skills such as conversation, listening, and cultural exploration, using games, books, and authentic materials. Additionally, it emphasizes cross-curricular connections and the importance of engaging with native speakers for a comprehensive learning experience.

1. Activities for all 5
C’s During Small
Group Centers

2. Activity Ideas
 Interpersonal (two-way conversations)
 Interpretive (listening/reading/watching)
 Presentational (creating a final product)
 Culture
 Connections
 Comparisons
 Communities
The 5 C’s Centers

3. Interpersonal Skills
person-to-person
speaking

4. Interpersonal Skills
Teacher Table
 Having simple conversations about personal information
 Talking about likes, dislikes, or opinions
 Playing “Go Fish” or a variation
 Describing a series of pictures
 Talking about a holiday with picture support
 Role-playing with puppets or animals (even older students!)
 Introducing or using situation cards
 Hints:
 Always ask “push” questions
 Have a class list, rubric copy, or laptop for recording scores and
making notes

5. Interpersonal Skills
Student Centers
 Practicing a situation card or known
dialogue
 Learning new content with vocabulary,
hint sheets, dictionaries or computer
kiosks
 Using puppets, old cell-phones, or
walkie- talkies to make it fun
 Recording with laptops, digital recorder,
iPods, flip camera, or cassette player

6. Interpersonal Skills
Student Center Games
 Hangman
 “Guess who?” or Eggspert games with a
designated leader
 Teacher-created games with dice
 Candyland or Chutes and Ladders (no
English!)
 Go Fish
 Culturally authentic games
 Online games with one student as
“Vanna White”
one student as “leader”

7. Interpretive Skills
listening and reading for a purpose

8. Listening Center • Books
• Songs
• Conversations
• Poetry
• Speeches
• Listen for a certain word and count instances
• Teacher-created listening test with questions
• Fill in the missing words – works great for songs!
• Match what you hear to pictures
• Listen and put book pictures in order (great if you
have a children’s book on tape)
• Put words in order (on sentence strips or copies)
• Tapes
• iPods
• Laptops

9. Watching Center
• Cartoon
• Song video
• Conversation video
• Drama
• Other YouTube find!
• Put written sentences describing scenes in order
• Match pictures from story to written sentences
• Answer main idea questions
• Answer comprehension questions
• Listen for the number of times they hear a certain word.
• Write a sentence about different scenes or characters
• VCR
• Laptop

10. Reading Center • Books
• Poetry
• Articles
• Advertisements
• Cartoons
• Read an article and answer comprehension questions.
•Read an article and count how many times they find different
words or “find the cognates.”
• Put cut-up sentences in order
• Choose best sentence to describe character, main idea,
problem, solution.
• Do a word sort with cards and then transfer to a paper with
columns.
Authentic Materials

11. Reading Center
Teacher-created Materials
• Matching words to pictures
•Matching words to definitions
• Draw illustrations for words or paragraphs
• Word fill-in with sentences

12. Presentational Skills
one-way presentational
speaking and writing
final drafts, well-
practiced

13. Presentational Speaking
 Partners work with situation cards and prepare
skit for performance later
 Practice a short dialogue
 Readers-theater: read story, decide how to act
out, practice with props, act out later
 Use laptops or iPads to record their voices into PPT,
VoiceThread, or any other Web 2.0 presentation app)
Peer-score and peer-coach using rubrics
Record practice OR final product with digital recorder,
laptop, iPod, flip camera, or cassette.

14. Presentational Writing
Centers
 Write an acrostic poem in the target language.
 Label a picture or pictures
 Write a story about a picture prompt
 Write poetry, stories, etc.
 Create a construction paper organizer
 Teacher has pre-made PPT of pictures on laptop –
students write sentences to go with pictures on each
page
 Send a text or email to the teacher!
Options:
dictionaries or not
word lists or not

15. Culture Skills
exploring the relationship
between the products,
practices, and perspectives of
the target culture

16. Culture-Based Centers
 interacting with realia
 doing money rubbings
 learning about and practicing specific
customs
 playing culturally authentic games
 accessing websites in the target language
 viewing cultural topic videos
 eating, drinking something from culture
 creating models of food or art from clay or
other medium

17. Art-Based Culture Centers
 match an art piece to sentence or
paragraph that describes it
 brainstorm words or phrases about each
art piece
 write a paragraph or story about art
piece
 one partner describes, other points to
the art piece
 do “color-by-number” of art piece,
1 = rojo 2 = verde

18. Connections
• to other subject areas
• to content only available in the target
language

19. Connections: Math Centers
 one student reads number card, others use
straws, base 10 rods, blocks, etc. to create
number
 measuring various objects in Metric and British
 writing greater than/less than sentences
 monetary conversions and websites
 Sudoku (characters or written words)
 Written word math (cinco x cinco = ___)

20. Connections: Science Centers
 What in the room is magnetic? (room is
labeled - list up in target language)
 What in the room is metal, wood, etc.?
 Classifying animals by various characteristics
and creating chart
 Putting together life-cycle pictures for plants,
animals, etc.
 Listening to a YouTube video explaining
simple science concept in target language

21. Connections:
Art, Music and PE
 Make a target culture craft
 Draw a scene to be labeled later
 Compare 2 target culture songs for
various characteristics
 Write a few sentences about why one
song is better.
 Learn a dance step or dance
from written directions, video, etc.

22. Comparisons
of languages and cultures

23. Comparisons-based Centers
 Creating Venn diagrams (written or
pictures) or other graphic organizers.
 Writing about own family, home, etc.
versus target culture family, home,
studied (perhaps English)
 Investigating written work in both
languages (ex. same picture book in two
languages) and answering questions
about similarities/differences
 Looking at maps from different countries
and answering comparison questions or
highlighting countries.

24. Communities
The Ultimate Center!

25. Communities-based Centers
 Native-speaker visitor(s) as the center
(be sure to give task or games!)
 Reading, listening to or writing pen pal
letters
 Looking at video from pen pals
 Looking at YouTube video of peers
 Constructing an email, letter, picture, etc.
to share with native speakers
 Creating something in target language to
be shared with the school or home for
the purpose of language
sharing/teaching