I learned at iFLT 2016 that using the interests of your students goes a LONG way to providing compelling input and building community. So I knew I wanted to do something with Pokémon Go. Here is what I have been doing in class and my future plans.

• After the first few days of asking ¿Adónde fuiste? (Where did you go?) I went digging for Pokémon Go fanatics. Honestly it came up pretty naturally when I asked about their weekend. I found those who went Pokémon hunting.

• I introduced vocabulary using Martina Bex’s dictionary page (I make one change by only having one box instead of two because I have my younger students just draw a picture)

  • busca- he/she looks for

  • ve- he/she sees

• Then I projected some of their pictures from the dictionary page and ask questions. For example, one girl drew herself looking for her iPod but her little sister took it. Then I asked about other brothers and sisters that take things. Do you take things? I had a student that took their parent’s cellphone to play Pokémon Go. (HELLO! Brandon Brown dice la verdad!!)

• I introduced MI AVENTURA- a PowerPoint of my adventure looking for Pokémon around the school (Circling and personalizing throughout the presentation). I told the story as if I didn’t know that Pokémon weren’t living in the real world and went looking for REAL Pokémon. I took pictures with me going into their classrooms and other rooms in the school. I used the PAST tense version for my older students and the PRESENT tense version for my little kids. Below are some slides I used. (If you are interested in the full PowerPoint then email me.) [email protected]

  

   

  

   

  

   

  

   

  

   

  

   

• The next class time we went hunting for Pokémon with my iPad. I gave the students a map of the school and the grounds. They had a green and red color pencil to mark where we would find Pokémon. I realized pretty soon we needed to mark Poké Stops and Gyms too. As we walked around we watched Pokémon Go and marked when we found something and whether or not we caught Pokémon. Some students wanted to write the names of the Pokémon and others wanted to draw them. Some just wanted to mark a green check mark or a red X. See below my hunt with 4th grade.

  

• So now students have a map that is marked with Pokémon, Poké Stops and Gyms. We  will project the map and talk about it. (I plan to use buscamos- we looked for, vimos- we saw and  había- there was/were but you could use encontrar or capturar) We will talk about where we saw different things, how many and describe the different Pokémon.

• I haven’t gotten to this yet but my next plan is to write up a summary of the events that we read and possibly draw pictures. In the older classes we might write the summary together then illustrate.

• Lastly I plan to use a Pokémon Go infographic to look for words we know and discuss the game.

• I would also like students to log in to their Pokémon Go accounts on my iPad to show off their Pokémon collections. (Our school secretary is OBSESSED. So I would love for her to come show off her collection.)

What are you doing in your class? Here is a post by  SraSpanglish with her great ideas. Kristy Placido has a FREE reading for older students.