One Pen, One Die

By Elaine Kelly | Posted: Wednesday November 3, 2021

Recently in Year 9 French, we have been adopting some language learning strategies from the EPI (Extensive Processing Instruction) approach.

This approach, now adopted by many language teachers around the world who are part of the Global Innovative Language Teachers group, is a method of instruction which helps students acquire language through modelling and awareness of structures before they are expected to independently reproduce it. 

There are many games involved in this type of learning. One of the most engaging and a firm favourite is the game "One Pen, One Die". A set of sentences are to be translated and the first to translate them all wins. However, in the game there is only one pen. If you are writing the translations, your opponent is fiercely trying to roll a six to force you to surrender the pen. All the while, boys are seeing model sentences and reinforcing the structures which then allows them to more accurately reproduce it in their speaking. 

Boys are focused, engaged and a high level of accuracy is the only way to win. This is only to be expected in Term 4 where Excellence is the school value we are focusing on!