Quid est?

This is another very easy activity to run that both reinforces new vocabulary and reviews the old.  To play this game,  you need whiteboards,  a series of slides that depict some of the new vocabulary you have learned. It's helpful if the slides contains other things besides the image. For example, here's an image that I used to describe nuntius.

 The first part of this activity, I call "Guess What's In My Head. " The procedure is simple.  Students look at the slide and make an educated guess about which new word is represented by the picture.  Students use their latest vocabulary list for this part of the game.  After a a minute or two, I ask everyone to hold up the white boards with the word they wrote on it.  I tell them what the word was.  If they got it correct, they get a "point" tallied on the top corner of the white board. Sometimes students will argue that another word was equally viable.  I remind them that the game is called "Guess What's In MY Head" and award no points.  I'm mean that way.  The next step is for me to say a few simple sentences in Latin about the picture. I might say for example:  Vir in manu nuntium tenet.  Familia adest.  Uxor et puer etiam in pictura est. Of course there's a lot more that could be said, but I like to keep it short and my students are Latin I so our water words are rather limited. Then I show another slide and repeat the process.  I do this about 12-15 times.  
        For the next round,  I show the students the same slides and this time,  I tell them to write a word or a phrase in Latin suggested by the slide but it cannot be the word "that was in my head."   All original answers get double points.   They think for a few minutes, write and then hold up the answers.  I read some and tell them to show them to each other as well.  Always,  I am amazed at what students can find to say about these pictures even with limited vocabulary and limited objects in the picture.  Once,  during this part,  a student looking at a picture of clouds, wrote "Deus adest."  Existentialism and irregular verbs - I was impressed.  We usually only get through about half the slides for the second part.  Game time runs about 30 minutes.

Tips to Make this Game Work:

• Remind students when you say a few sentences in Latin about the slides that they should pay attention because they may want to recall some of this for the second part of the game.
• Colors, numbers work well for this game.
• In part II, students can only use a word or phrase once per slide.  For example, a student could simply say, "pictura" about any slide but they may only use that once.
• Points aren't really that important here but some students meticulously keep track of them anyway while loudly announcing to the rest of class how many they have.  
• Any answer that is "suggested" by the slide is good.  Sometimes my students will write what they think one of the characters is thinking rather than concretely describe something in the picture.  For example, a viable answer might be, "Quid tu habes?" as from the point of view of the woman. That's pretty cool too. 

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