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Through the Ñandu listserv (which you should all join) I heard about a game called ¡Ay, caramba! It is a really easy game to implement and create to fit the needs of your students. It is a vocabulary review game that is perfect at the end of a unit to review the relevant words learned. What's great about the game is that you can keep it as a station in your classroom and keep adding new vocabulary without having to remove old vocabulary. Over time, students are practicing all the key words they have learned this school year.
Before playing the game I showed my students this presentation. It is very simple introduction to the objective of the game, which is to avoid the
¡Ay, caramba! card. The presentation essentially says that Bart Simpson is bad. If you see him, you have to say ¡Ay, caramba!
The way to create the game is to create cards that have pictures/word cards with the vocabulary printed on them. Then make a few cards that have Bart Simpson's picture on them. It is up to you whether to use text on the cards or not under the pictures. I always use text and pictures, but to make it more challenging you could just use pictures. In this example we were reviewing seasons and numbers so that is what I used in my version of the game:
Here's a link to a template you can use to create the vocabulary cards.
Rules of the Game:
Split your class into teams. Teams can be from 2-5 players. Each team gets a bag with the vocabulary cards in it. Students take turns pulling cards from the vocabulary bag. If they pull a vocabulary word they must say the word and keep it. If they get the Bart Simpson card (¡Ay, caramba! card) they must put all their cards back in the bag. The person at the end of the game with the most cards in their pile wins (it is really great that there can be more than one winner.)