This is a huge flashback for me. I remember smurfs (los pitufos en español) were all the rage when in was in 3rd grade. I used to draw them all the time for my friends and even made a poster that won 1st place at the prestigious Smurf Pancake Feed 😂. Well 40+ years later I found myself at a summer scholarship program at the University of Salamanca only to have the professor talking about smurfs!
Ok the professor, Ana María wasn’t really talking about smurfs, but she did teach us a game called “pitufar,” or “to smurf.” The game goes like this:
STEP 1: The guesser leaves the room where they cannot hear the class, who discusses and picks a verb that the guesser must try to figure out.
STEP 2: Someone goes and brings the guesser back in, who proceeds to question the class to try to figure out the verb. As they are questioning the class, they insert the verb “pitufar” in place of the verb.
It’s as simple as that! Obviously pitufar is a fake word, but it still could be a great way to provide input to earlier levels by having the teacher always be the guesser. That way the students just have to figure out how to accurately answer the teacher’s yes/no questions. Another idea for this is that you could intentionally use particular vocabulary (for example if you are studying clothing, you could ask questions involving clothing) or a particular verb tense. This was SO fun and I can’t wait to do it with my classes!
Well, I finally did it!
I had ten minutes to introduce it and play a game with my IB students. I made it teacher versus students and used slide 1 to introduce them to the concept. My students came to win, and win they did! The first class stumped me with “caer” (to fall) and the second class destroyed me with “pertenecer” (to belong) and the last class finished me off with “revolucionar” (to revolutionize).
Monday after Thanksgiving break is always a tough day (for students and teachers alike!), so we are kicking off the week with a day of pitufar! I am flipping it for this round!
- a student volunteer will be the guesser!
- the student can ask their own questions, but they will be handed a printout of the questions on slides 2 and 3 to take the pressure off
- I envision this evolving to the teacher or student guesser being the ONLY one who knows the verb and the rest of the class has to ask the questions and try to guess the word.
Monday after break, bring it on!!
Storytime con Sra. Jensen 