Fact or Opinion: You Decide!

Game: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1v7vP1hlfMwby-TbyfCBXcwsxsSsXrvdY/view?usp=sharing

Choose Your Own Adventure: Rock Cycle

Choose Your Own Adventure Style: Rock Cycle Wheel (free download) Students find images or draw pictures on their wheel. They fasten the two circles together and ride the rock cycle. They spin clockwise and counterclockwise, choosing their own adventure!

After kids have fun riding the rock cycle, then invite them outside for a fun game of rock cycle tag! Free printable here!

Landform Postcards Game

https://drive.google.com/file/d/10GyVhHH0ynTsBT-ObwWJ3IF8aYT7jhEB/view?usp=sharing

MATCHING GAME
Kids identify 30 landforms through a fun game of matching the front and back of postcards! The front of each postcard has an image of the landmark, the location of the landmark and a greeting (in the language of the location). The back of each postcard has a friendly letter from "Jack" with the definition of each landmark. There are also blank postcards (fronts and backs) for kids to design their own postcards.

Food Chain Activity Pack

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZrA7r34OAF26HxWMep5rVQubxY9z15tf/view?usp=sharing

Food Chain Card Game (72 cards) Cards include animals (carnivores, omnivores and herbivores) and plants from the ocean, desert, rainforest, tundra and forest. There are 2 sets of cards: easy and advanced level. The easy level is color coded so kids know what habitat each item belongs to (making building a food chain easier). The advanced cards are not color coded. Kids have to figure out what eats what based on their knowledge of what animals and plants belong to each biome. Game is played like Go Fish.

Food Chain Freeze Tag Headbands (36 Headbands)10 different food chains from different habitats
This activity is inspired by Eecko World's "We're All In This Together." 
Give each child a construction paper headband with a different plant or animal that is part of a food chain (include organisms from different habitats). Take students to a large open area outside. Kids have to look for a plant or animal that their organism consumes. They tag what they eat! If a child is tagged, they must freeze (stand still)! Who is left at the end of the game?!

Afterwards, have kids try to find organisms that belong to their habitat (creating small groups). Kids must problem solve and try to figure out who belongs in their "group." Also, where would you find the organisms in their group? What habitat do they live in?!

3 Different Reinforcement Ideas, 1 printable: Food Chain Graphic Organizer

Packaging Crayons: Assembly Line vs. No Division of Labor

Help students understand the efficiency of an assembly line by having them package crayons! In this activity half of the class is part of an assembly line and the other half has no division of labor.

Assembly Line Instructions:
Separate crayons by color into different bins.
Lay the bins out in a line.
Put a package of Ziploc bags at one end of the line.
Put an empty bin on the other end of the line (used to "ship" crayons out to consumers).
Students sit in a line, pass the baggie down the line and add 1 crayon.
The last person zips up the bag and puts it in the bin to send off!

No Division of Labor:
Set out crayons in separate bins (separated by color exactly like the assembly line).
Put the bin for "shipping" crayons near the line.
Give each child 1 Ziploc bag to start out with.
Give each child a special ticket.
Ticket has their name on and the order in which they have to collect crayons in their bag.
Students work independently collecting crayons.
Make sure that you make out tickets so kids have to go to the same color crayon bin at the same time to provide them with a challenge!
Once students collect their crayons, they zip their bag and put it in the bin.
Then they have to grab another bag and follow the list of colors on their ticket again!

Have students package crayons for 2-3 minutes. Who will finish first?! When time is up check their crayon bags. Does each bag have 1 of each color crayon? If not the bag cannot be counted.

Students discover that they can package more crayons by making an assembly line.
Have kids talk about what way they found to be easier: assembly line or no division of labor.

Alphabet Grid: Phonics

materials: sidewalk chalk or masking tape

ABC GRID

Phoneme-Grapheme Correspondance & Letter Recognition

1. Jump on letter name, say the sound

2. Teacher calls out a letter sound, student jumps on the letter that represents the sound

3. Hold up an object, have the student locate and jump on the beginning, middle or end sound. Ex: Beginning sound of the word ball. Student jumps on the letter /b/

Segment & Blend the Word

After children find beginning, middle and end sounds of the word, have them segment it 

and blend the word on a separate. Ex: grid /b/ /a/ /ll/ = ball

(Phoneme segmentation. The ability to identify separate phonemes in a spoken word.)

SPELL

Have child choose an object and spell the word phonetically, jumping to each letter on the alphabet grid. Child shouts out letters Ex: dog: child jumps on D-O-G 

Word Choice!

Help students expand their vocabulary and make their writing more descriptive by switching up their words! 

Introduction video: WORD CHOICE!

Next, pull out 2 identical postcards (pictured above). Read and project them onto the white board. Students compare and contrast the letters. Call students up to circle the words that are similar with different shades of meaning (synonyms). Ask students which letter was more successful, why? 

Then, play a whole group game: Hello My Name Is. Give each student a name tag with a word on it. They must go around the room and identify their match: a synonym for their word. Afterwards, have the students try to find an antonym for their word. 

Project: Younger students can create a Synonym City to display in the classroom! Click here for details. Older students can rewrite a song independently or in a group. Check out this activity here!

Big, Bigger, Biggest Sentence!

This whole group activity helps students learn about sentence stretching from their peers. They work as a group and learn by watching their classmates. First, split students up into groups of three. Each group comes up to the front of the classroom. The first student makes up a simple sentence. The next person adds more detail. The third person adds even more detail. The group stays up there until each group member has had a chance to create a simple sentence (be the first person to start the sentence round). To add some competition, you could give kids so much time to create their sentence. They get a point if each team member can think quick enough - sentence makes the cut before time runs out!

4 Types of Sentences: Game & Tech

Learn about the 4 Types of Sentences: declarative, imperative, interrogative and exclamatory with a kinesthetic game and tech project (selfie digital comic)! Visit We Are Teachers to see my post and to download free printables to go along with this lesson! Click here for free printables!

Learning with Sticky Notes and Yarn

This hands-on review idea comes from Hands On as We Grow! (They did sight words). You can use it to assess students on any topic: operations and algebraic thinking, synonyms and antonyms or food chains (just to name a few). The food chain activity doesn't even need sticky notes (just print out images). The possibilities are endless with yarn and tape!

Stacked: Learning with Styrofoam Cups

Check out my post at We Are Teachers: Ways to teach English Language Arts (featured above), Math, Social Studies, and Science using styrofoam cups!

Equivalent Fractions Musical Plates

Get children up and moving with this fun, kinesthetic fraction activity! Children are given a fraction and dance around to music, trying to find its equivalent. Written and visual representations of fractions are used to assess children's understanding!

materials:

post-it notes

paper plates

sharpie to write fractions

visual representations of fractions to glue on plate

music

instructions:

Give each student a fraction written on a post-it note. Students remember their fraction and stick it on their shirt. Next, lay out the paper plates with fractions written (or pasted) on them. You should make a variety of equivalent fraction plates for each student and spread them far apart. Then, each student will have to really look to find a plate that is equivalent.

Start up the music and children dance and hunt for a fraction that is equivalent to their own. When they find a fraction that is equivalent, they stand on the paper plate. If they don't find an equivalent fraction before the music stops, they're out! For each round, students keep hunting for fractions. Once there are no more fractions that are equivalent to their own, they sit out. They found all of their fractions! 

This activity can be played as a whole group or with small groups to assess the children's learning. 

Syllable Hunt

Students are given a word and stick it to their shirt. They must go around the room and find peers that have a word with the same number of syllables as their word. Once they have found their group, they stay together. The teacher goes around the room checking the groups and assessing the children's knowledge of syllables.

Genre Sort Tic-Tac-Toe

Call students over to a table of books. They choose a genre to play tic-tac-toe with a peer. The first person to get three correct genres in a row wins!

Fraction Pictionary

This activity is from the Oregon Department of Education. Students play Pictionary with fractions! Divide students into teams. One child draws the fraction on the board. His/her teammates try to guess the image as well as the fraction! If their team guesses correctly they get a point. When drawing, children can divide single objects to represent fractions (shown above) and you could also thrown in multiple objects. For example, 2/5 dogs. A student could draw 2 dogs and 3 cats. Also, check out Fraction Charades!

Corners: Punctuation & Sentences

This fun game comes from Color Me Kinder! Children run to one of the corners of the classroom that have punctuation marks or sentence types posted near them. Then, the teacher reads a sentence. Anyone that is in the corner of the punctuation mark that the sentence needs sits down. For older students you can work on types of sentences. Students choose a corner. If they are in the corner that matches the sentence, they sit down. The game continues until everyone is sitting down. The winner of this game is completely by chance. Punctuation and sentence types are reinforced throughout the game.

Centimeter Crawl

Have a race with your plastic figurines! Students pick a card, measure using the number on the card, and create a path. Whoever reaches the end of the paper first wins!

Main Idea / Supporting Details

Over at The Schroeder Page, students had a main idea and supporting details scavenger hunt! 

Some students are given a main idea written on a paper headband. Other students have supporting details written on paper wristbands. Children have to go around the room and find the group they belong to. (4 in a group: 1 main idea and 3 supporting details). Check out the lesson here!

For more main idea activities check out Brain Pop Jr. 

Me on the Map!

Help children understand where they are located in relation to the world by making geography stacking cups! Book to go along with activity: Me on the Map! by Joan Sweeney. Click here for food chain stacking cups.

Newspaper Fraction Dancing!

Turn on the music! This math activity comes from Mrs. King Rocks! Kids learn about fractions by folding and dancing on newspaper! Visit Mrs. King's Music Class to see the activity in action!