10 Things You Can Do with Dice in the Language Classroom!

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1. Make dice!

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With a printable template*, printed on light card, some pencils or markers and some scissors, you can have a whole class make their own dice. They can make regular dice with the numbers 1-6 written in words (uno, dos, tres etc), or dice with words or pictures drawn for six items of vocabulary they've just learned (colours, pets, clothes, whatever!).

* the templates in this link have dots on them for numbers, but you can just tipex them before photocopying. I linked this site because it has six, ten and 12 sided templates and they're free.

Whatever the subject, once the dice are made you can use them for all sorts of things. 

Use dice with words:

2. I have a colour die and a clothing die. I roll both dice and get "azul" and "camiseta". The first person in my small group to say "a blue t-shirt" wins a point. 

3. OR The first person in my small group to say "Una camiseta azul" wins a point. 

4. Or, I'm working on drawing and I draw and label a blue t-shirt, before rolling again to see what else is in the "outfit" I'm making.

5. Or, I have a die for nouns, one for verbs, and one for adjectives, and I can play mad-libs!

Use picture dice:

6. Do a quick-fire vocab quiz with dice that don't have any words on them. 

( you can also do numbers 2-4 above with picture only dice, but it's a little harder!)

Practice your numbers!

Not every die in the world has six sides! Here is a link to a "Pound of Dice" listing on Amazon, a fantastic online dice shop based in the UK (and here's another one set up especially for teachers), where you can get dice in a whole bunch of varieties. (impress the nerd in your class by knowing that a six sided die is called a d6, and a 20 sided die is a d20, and so on!)

Anyway, if you get a small selection of dice you could...

7. Roll two or more dice and write down the numbers in words in the form of a maths equation. (For bonus points you could have another die with +,-, x,/, on the sides, to tell you what the equation should be!)

so I roll a d20, a d6 and a d4, and I get 12, 5 and 1. 

I write down: Doce + Cinco - Uno = Dieciseis

How d'you like that cross-curricular numeracy! 

8. Play countdown

Not SO much a language classroom game, this one, but still great for practising bigger numbers.

I write roll three dice for a target number and write doscientos treinta y seis on the board

I roll five more dice and write up "Dos, Ocho, Once, Seis, Cuatro" and start a two minute timer.

A student writes: 

(seis + cuatro) x once = 110

ciento diez + ocho = ciento dieciocho

ciento dieciocho x dos = doscientos treinta y seis

they, or the person nearest the target number, wins.

9. Have a student roll dice to pick a random student to answer a question, or start the presentations - It doesn't always have to go alphabetically!

10. Practice your grammar

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Print 3 numbered sheets with six tenses, six persons, and six verbs, and have students roll three times to make a sentence.

So first I roll a 2 and that's "future", then I get 3: he or she, and then I roll a 5: "hablar"

My sentence might be "mi profesora hablará el español en el examen, la semana que viene."

I love this because it goes some way towards making the language you're going to need and use unpredictable, which is more like real life!

And a bonus one:

11. Combine a couple of the above ideas and have a totally spontaneous dialogue:

One student rolls a colour die and a noun die, and asks the shop assistant how much the (I guess we'll stick with) a blue tshirt costs.

The second student rolls two dice and adds or multiplies the numbers to get a price.

The first student can buy it or not, and they say goodbye.

If you have more ideas...

Please mail them to me on a stamped addressed dustbin lid, or alternatively, pop them in the comments.