Any more ideas?  The dialogues are a big part of the national curriculum for elementary school.

Good thread idea- little to contribute myself though unfortunately.

I have classes of 35-41 and many cramped classrooms (No English room) so running dictation isn't possible for me and making cut outs is time consuming, though I can do it on the powerpoint (but it's not as fun then!)

My co-teachers like me to get them to all chorus it, which gets at least half involved, if not too interested. The dialogue sections are usually quickly gone through, before the interest gained in previous sections are gone.

@Eden - if your classroom is too small for running dialog, you can always change it up a bit and make it the silent telephone game (not sure what its called exactly) but where you have groups (sitting at their desks even) and whisper a sentence in the first member's ear. (maybe in order, so team one = sentence one, team 2 = sentence 2 etc).  Have the first member whisper to the second, second to third etc.  Last member has to say the dialog sentence.  You can reveal the correct sentence (cause they usually get it wrong!!) on the board.  Will be funny to point out the differences etc. and in the end you have the whole dialog on the board.  after which they can chant it or whatever.

I know its a super old game, but I wasn't sure about the name, so sorry for the boring explanation! :)

Pleasure!  My elementary kids love playing whisper games, lol, so I thought it could work with this too.

Also you can teach them some emotions (or if they already know them) make a big dice with emotion faces on them, the group has to roll the dice, and read the (short) dialog with that emotion - like happy, sad, angry etc.  The emotions aren't really important, but it'll be repetition of the dialog and it'll be all silly... I just imagine reading something very funny in a serious way or vice versa.  Not sure if they'd be able to do it though..

The listen-and-repeat sections are really dreadful for me personally. Kids are usually pretty awesome about raising their hands, volunteering to be one of the characters, but lately what I've been doing is asking the class to repeat in funny voices (baby, grandmother, monster, etc). It's silly, but so is listening and repeating!

So.. here's an idea for those with a bigger class and lower level students, but it can be adapted for higher level.
Use a hand stick. I have a ton of these sticks with a paper hand on top.Each group gets one or two words depending on what english you want them to focus on.
 On the stick, you can write one of the focus words from the dialog.(Sentence if the students are higher level). When the students hear it, they must lift their stick. The group members all pay attention and tell the stick holder because they dont want to miss their word.
Good luck all, I am going to use all your ideas

My students couldn't care less about the various adventures and misadventures of Nami, Joon, and the gang. Frankly, I don't blame them. The dialog videos for 5th and 6th grade have always been dreadfully boring.

As such, I typically try to make each dialog into a game or activity. In the past I've done the following:

A speed quiz. Students listen carefully to the dialog and answer questions about the content. Each team is given a fly swatter. The fastest team to raise their swatter and give the correct answer gets 3 points. Incorrect answers lose 2 points.

A correcting game. Students listen to the dialog and take notes. After the dialog, I show them a ppt with a modified script full of errors and substitutions. The student re-write the dialog, correcting the errors. The team with the most corrections gets points.

Secret code game. I pass out a worksheet with the script of the dialog written in secret code. The students must listen to the dialog and write it on their paper in order to solve the code. At the bottom of the page is a secret message that tells the students to call me at my cell number. The fastest team gets 10 points, second team gets 8 points, etc.

Hidden message game. Similar to hangman. I choose a secret sentence (usually a key expression from a previous chapter) and write an appropriate number of blank spaces on the board. Students listen to the dialog and answer questions. Each correct answer gets 3 points. A team that answers correctly can guess a letter. For each letter that appears in the secret sentence, they receive an additional point. If the team can guess the sentence, they get 5 points.

Telephone game Students listen to the dialog. I then whisper key expressions of the dialog into the first student's ear. The message is passed around the room until it comes out the other side, usually with funny results.

If you have any other suggestions, please let me know.

My co-teacher and I stole an idea that we found at an open class one time.  Have them use different voices when they are doing the listen and repeat section.  We have them whisper, yell, use a scary voice, use a mouse's voice, speak very slowly/quickly, use a robot's voice, use an angry voice, etc.  Sometimes we use the ppt I've uploaded.

I thought of this idea from an activity I used in Summer Camp and I am going to try it with 5th grade this week.

Basically I give every student a print out of the dialogue after the first lesson and we read it everyday. This week when we
get to the project page of the book (review section) I will ask each group to make a comic strip using the dialogue.
They can use any characters they choose and change some of the vocab (e.g. instead of 'whose boat is this?' they can have 'whose monkey is this?').

I was told they have to memorize the dialogues this year so I'm willing to try anything.