I wanted my students to have the chance to revise core vocabulary and build sentences, so I created this pirates game. Students get a  set of cards in small groups and take it in turns to turn a card. The card will show an item of vocabulary (in this case food or drink) and they have to be able to use the item in a sentence in order to keep the card. The students were
creating sentences such as "Me gusta comer ....... " "Ayer bebí ..." etc. If the
player doesn't know how to say the vocabulary item,  then they return it to the bottom of a pile. If, however, a player turns over a pirate card, then they lose all the cards they are currently holding. It's best to put these off to one side rather than back on the pile or the game will go on forever ! The player with the most cards at the end wins. The students loved it, except the poor girl who got four pirates in a row. : )
DOWNLOAD food template

Yesterday I was very excited by the arrival of my new set of dice (to be fair, I'm easily amused but they're so colourful). I had two goals in planning time today - to use my dice and to ensure I got my year 12 talking more. The result is this dice speaking game. The idea is students role two dice (my pretty new ones match the colours across the top and the side) to get a co-ordinate. They then have to talk about whatever topic is shown in order to win that square and place one of their counters on it. Students are competing to place 3 counters in a row. If a second player rolls a coordinate that has already been taken, they can knock the counter and claim the square as their own. Year 12 were really engaged by the task, but most importantly spoke lengthy amounts of German for the whole lesson. We never got a winner by the time we packed up, as they kept knocking each other off but it didn't really matter! I took it to be a good sign that they were amazed when I told them it was pack up time and asked if they could play again on Monday.
I have made one for AS and one for Spanish GCSE, but clearly it would lend itself to any year group and topic. 
AS German game
Spanish GCSE game  

www.quizlet.com has to be one of my favourite ever sites. Once you have created a (free) account, you can create quizzes on just about anything. Obviously it lends itself very well to the vast amounts of vocab students need to know in MFL.
You can opt to password protect your quizzes if you wish or keep them public. It is easy to share the link and students can complete the wide variety of quizzes to help them learn. There is also an app to download should students wish to. 
I used this last year to set my year 11 a quizlet challenge - between 19 and 20 of the crucial German words each week.(here for challenge) Feedback about the site was very positive and I now use it weekly with my AS group too. 
It is very easy and quick to use and, although I always create my own sets to suit my students, there are tons of sets already created and shared by lots of kind teachers out there. Alternatively, get students to create and share their own sets. Enjoy! 

Following on from some excellent in school training on differentiation,
I created this task to help year 10 learn food and drink items.
Students have time to read the statements on their own and then to categorise them however they wish. As there is no right or wrong answers, all students are able to complete the task at their own level.
Students were allowed dictionaries to help understand the statements, but I deliberately included a range of cognates to build confidence.
Once students have chosen a category (some examples were fruit, drinks, positive opinions, future tense and vegetables), they write the number of any statement which would be included. The statements can be used more than once, as long as students are able to justify how it fits into their chosen categories.
I gave students ten minutes individually and then they worked in pairs to share ideas and expand their answers. More able students justified their choices in Spanish also.
This was the first time students had tried a task like this in Spanish and they responded very positively and came up with categories I had not even considered whilst writing the statements. Food and drink is such a vast topic, but the task engaged students well. I followed this task by giving groups a set of food and drink cards to discuss and I definitely think the modelled sentences in the inductive task helped them to produced more sophisticated responses. The full lesson is available to download below.
Categorisation task
Lesson power point and speaking cards
Speaking support sheet (always on desks and a regular feature of lessons)
Jenga sheet (students played jenga at the end of the lesson just to reinforce some of the core vocabulary. First round, they just had to translate the items. Second round they had to use it in a sentence.)

Thanks to Rachel Smith (@lancslassrach) for sharing this wonderful site, where you can read books in a range of languages. There is also an ICDL app to make life even easier. http://en.childrenslibrary.org/