Dollar saved is a dollar earned.

As mentioned before, I have a co-teacher who studied and has certification in TEE. This week we worked together to plan a new activity for the students.
The activity was called "Find your partner", as you can guess the goal of the activity is to find your partner as many times as possible.

For the activity there are four steps: first, students would get a card with a character on it and an interest. They would then have to find the character that matches them (Mario goes with Luigi, Pororo goes with Eddy) They would then find their partner, introduce themselves (because no one can see their card but them) find out the other persons interest and then introduce their partner to the teacher. When they could successfully introduce their partner, they would fill in their chart (to keep track of their pairings) and get a new card. The students with the most partners and checks by the end of the time (5-10mins) would get a sticker or leave first (depending on co-teacher)

For this activity, I wanted the students to practice using the phrase "I'm interested in ____." and be able to understand and notice the key information from when their partner spoke. (What are they interested in, and have it be remembered.)
All students in the classroom were able to make at least 2 pairs and introduce their partner. Most students got around 4 or 5 pairs in 10 minutes.
The students who made few pairs were the students who were naturally shy. Many of the girls in my class were hesitant to be the first ones to speak. Luckily, the boys in the class were very competitive and would initiate many of the conversations in the classroom in hopes of finding their partner quickly.
In the future, I will have to find a way to make the girls in the class more comfortable with speaking first, but I am unsure as to what activities would encourage risk taking behavior.
 
Before this activity was done, my co-teacher and I had a meeting about how the directions would be presented to the students. She suggested having a flow chart on the board of dialoge the students could use, based on if they match or not. I suggested authentic dialog that would happen for two people meeting. Some of the dialog couldn't be changed due to it being important for the next day's test, but most of it was flexible.
Talking with her I found that simplifying my directions and getting the most meaning out of the fewest words was the best. 
We settled on four directions for the activity with a role play/model for the 2nd direction to add clarification.
She wanted the format to be all directions given by me and then she would check their understanding in English after.

1: Get a card
2: Find your partner
3: Check with the teacher
4: Get a NEW card and fill in the chart. (the chart was drawn earlier in their notebooks)

The new directions were taken slowly and I had the students repeat each direction as I introduced it. I would hold the card up for the first direction. For the second I asked the students who Mario's partner would be. Then I showed the two cards coming together when I said partner. I then showed a model of the dialog on the board of what I expected the students to say when they checked with the teacher. "This is _____. She's interested in ____."  Any variation with the partners name and the interest was deemed acceptable.

After the directions were given, my co-teacher checked details I had given the students for each step: "How many cards do you get?" "When you find your partner what do you do next?" "What do you do to get a sticker?"
When the directions were given this way, the students were faster in understanding the objective of the activity and their role in it. With a more confident role I found more students were more likly to use more dialog than given, since they felt comfortable in what they had to do. Some of the introductions changed to: "This is my friend, _____."

The one thing that really helped my in being successful in this activity was spending more time on directions, both outside of class with my co-teacher, and in class. Explanation of the directions with all student questions and comprehension checks took a total of 8 minutes, but it allowed for 10 minutes of activity where the students were the ones talking and using the key phrases correctly and confidently for the whole time.

I believe other classes I teach could benefit from an increased time on directions and negotiation of comprehension with the students. As my co-teacher and I agreed, if we spend the time now to explain the activity, we can do something similar in the future with less time on directions and still get the same positive results. Time spent now to introduce activities will in the long run, benefit the classroom as a whole.