In a fast-paced competition called Running Dictation, students are challenged to use reading, speaking, and listening skills to convey a story to a partner—in another language.

At Albert Hill Middle School in Richmond, VA, middle school Spanish teacher Jamie Midyette organizes her classes into story units, where the stories she chooses become the basis for learning new vocabulary and sentence structures. At the beginning of each unit, she shares a story (often a video from YouTube) that she has broken into individual illustrations and images. Once the students practice the vocabulary and learn the progression of the story—a process that unfolds over multiple class periods—she introduces a vocabulary review game called Running Dictation that presents a new challenge and pulls all the language skills into a sort of relay race.

Running Dictation is a beloved world languages activity originated by Jason Fritze and adapted by many teachers over the years, including Michele Whaley, Martina Bex of The Comprehensible Classroom, and Sarah Breckley. The worksheets seen in the video were sourced from La Familia Loca PLC, a professional learning community run by Anabelle Allen of La Maestra Loca, and the "Simon's Cat" story slides from Simon Tofield's comics were adapted from a presentation by Allison Litten.