The focus of this activity is to use a modified version of Taboo to help students practice speaking and listening, as well as describing vocabulary. Students describe a picture using nouns, verbs, and adjectives, but cannot say the “taboo” word(s). They work in pairs and guess the object based on their partner's description.

• presentation that reviews nouns, adjectives, and nouns (and explains how to use them in a descriptive context)

  • should include at least one practice round where teacher demonstrates describing an image without using select "taboo" words

• images on cards that students can use once in pairs

  • each image should include 1 to 2 words they cannot use during their descriptions (this can vary based on proficiency level)

• practice worksheet with one image, sentence stems (translations included), and word categories (below is an example I used with my students) https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jRXZzKxpvzcOPWZ6wlheZwZSoWc18YsyRI77mnkJJHM/edit?usp=sharing

• First the teacher will go through their presentation reviewing nouns, adjectives, and verbs

  • during this presentation the teacher will practice a round or two of Taboo with students, demonstrating how to use descriptive words and emphasizing avoiding the taboo words

• Afterwards, students will each work on their worksheet and then as a class you can all share your answers

• Once everything has been reviewed, students can partner up and the teacher will give each pair some image cards to play Taboo with (teacher should over estimate how many images will be needed, just to ensure there is enough to occupy the time)

  • Have challenges prepared in case students zoom through. This could include having extra taboo words or having challenging images

• Assessment(s) for this activity could be a multitude of things, including the image to the left which has students writing the part of speech that associates with each definition

• Another assessment could include the teacher going around to each student as they are playing Taboo and asking them to use a verb, noun, and adjective to describe a given image

• The teacher could use one sentence to describe an image to a student, and ask the student which part of speech they used

  • For example "The butterfly can fly"

    • students would respond with "fly is a verb"