Box of Lies - In-class or Virtual Communicative Activity

The person who opens the box can choose to describe the item itself or to lie about the item and make up something completely different. The opposing player or team can then pose questions to attempt to determine whether the person is telling the truth or not.

I found this activity to be a great way to promote spontaneous interaction on a “need to learn” basis, meaning students were intrinsically motivated (aka super excited!) to co-create anchor charts with vocabulary and expressions that they may need, including varied adjectives, verbs AVOIR and ÊTRE in singular, plural and negative forms, interrogative words and question formation. This also naturally led to discussions on the value of using gestures, eye contact, pitch, tone and volume to communicate/interact and equally to look and listen for those mentioned as well as body language and facial expressions to understand spoken French.

Depending on the grade, you may wish to check the curriculum expectations for Speaking to Understand, Speaking to Interact and Listening to Understand and Listening to Interact to review strategies and the ideas within the curriculum document teacher prompts. Here’s an example for grade 5 which I focused on but can totally be modified to suit a range of grade levels.

Related Descriptors from CEFR:

B1.1 Using Oral Communication Strategies: identify a range of speaking strategies and use them appropriately to express themselves clearly and coherently in French for various purposes and to a variety of audiences

B2.1 Using Speaking Interaction Strategies: demonstrate an understanding of appropriate speaking behaviour in a variety of situations

A2.1 Using Interactive Listening Strategies: identify and use interactive listening strategies to suit a variety of situations while participating in social and academic interactions (e.g., build on what others are saying by offering relevant comments when participating in paired and small group exchanges on familiar topics; observe a peer’s body language to help understand his or her intended message; ask questions in paired and small-group activities to clarify their understanding of what is said)

I modeled this game with a few students in class, which immediately sparked their interest! They couldn’t wait to outsmart their peers! Students started bringing in odd and interesting items for our boxes and we created anchor charts with what we thought could be useful vocabulary and expressions when playing the game live. Our goal was to play, first in-class and ultimately with other schools via Zoom virtually and, of course, to win! Students brainstormed possible lies as well as questions they could ask to dig deeper into the truth... or suspected lies. I was honestly astounded with what they came up with!

If you are an educator who doesn’t like “stuff” around, this may not be for you. As soon as this game was introduced, my class baskets became FULL of items that students couldn’t wait to integrate into their games and EVERY recess duty I had, was consumed by children attempting to whisper to me about their game strategies. Let’s be real-- I loved it!

I connected with interested educators via my social media networks, many of those whom I’d met at conferences in the past, and we compared classes and schedules. This is the tricky part. As FSL teachers with a range of grade levels and periods in a day, finding someone with a similar timetable or shifting around timetables to accommodate a virtual meeting time can prove to be difficult. That being said, it's definitely worth it!

We set up our laptops, projectors and boxes in anticipation. We also sent a few teasing images to spark interest.