Have you ever heard of Quiz, Quiz, Trade? It’s a great activity to practice, review, and engage your students! It can be as simple, or as challenging as you would like! Check out how I use it with my Spanish classes.
Kagan Structures
A few years ago, I was lucky enough to be able to attend a couple of days of Kagan workshop training. Right away I saw that the cooperative learning strategies could really lend themselves to a world language classroom. Students work in small groups or pairs, sharing out to the whole class in various ways. There are many different techniques and strategies Kagan teaches you how to use, and there’s no way I can cover them all in a single blog post. I absolutely recommend checking out a full day training – the schedule and locations can be found on the Kagan website. Jillian Baros has a great blog post on teaching using CI and Kagan structures if you would like a more comprehensive discussion on how the two pair together!
Quiz, Quiz, Trade
What I want to talk about is one of my favorite Kagan strategies – Quiz, Quiz, Trade. This structure is fantastic because it gets students up and out of their seats, speaking, practicing structures with classmates, and working with students they may not usually work with. It is worthwhile to note that students will be working alone, and doing a lot of output – this strategy is good for reviewing structures that you have modeled and practiced in class. Remember, input before output!
How to Get Started With Quiz, Quiz, Trade
The first few times you use a Kagan structure it will take a little time to set it up with students, but afterward, you just need to tell the students which structure, remind them of a few procedures, and you’re set! These are the slides I use to support my students’ understanding when I go through the Quiz, Quiz, Trade structure. I just insert the two applicable slides into my presentation for the day. I generally use the English slides and speak in Spanish, acting things out, grabbing partners to help model what we’re going to do. This year I hope to start using the Spanish slides after my classes become more familiar with the structure, during the quick review of procedures before we start.
Quiz, Quiz, Trade Set Up
- Come up questions you want to practice. I have used anywhere between 8 – 24 questions in a class size of 24. Think about how much time you’re planning for and how much practice you want them to have with the questions!
- Put each question on a card.
- Pass out one card to each student. Make sure the students all understand the card they have in hand and knows the correct answer.
*You can place the correct answer on the back of the card, do a practice activity with the questions, or do a quick small group activity to make sure all students are able to answer accurately. - Explain the structure and procedure to students. Visual support for procedures.
- Begin with Kagan structure StandUp-HandUp-PairUp to pair students. Students stand up, put their hands up, and high five another person with their hand up. They are now partners! When students are searching for a partner, their hands remain in the air for easy visibility.
- Person A reads their question
- Person B answers, A praises or coaches, giving feedback to help them improve
- B reads their question
- A answers, B praises or coaches, giving feedback to help them improve
- Swap cards and find a new partner (hand up in the air!)
Things to Keep in Mind
It is entirely likely that students may wind up with their original question. That is okay!! They’re just getting more practice. I time this activity and don’t let it go longer than 5 minutes. Five minutes of pure output is enough to give the students a break, move around, and get a lot of practice in, without too much time to get off task.
Here are ALL of my card sets that I use with this strategy!
Here are a few more resources for including more Kagan structures in your language classroom:
Curt Wayns says
Really great information, thanks for the share and insights!