If you’re teaching children, this activity can be used a lot.

As you can see in the short video clip, there is a white board with words at the top. There words are the same vocabulary from the student’s text book. “Let’s Go Phonics.”

This activity works well when teaching vowels. So if you are teaching short a words, write at the top of the board “bat, cat, fat, mat, and so on. 5 to 7 words should do.

Make two teams. Each team member writes the word you call out. Mix the words up or they’ll figure out, you always call out the words in order. If this happens, they’ll miss out on finding the words using their own head.

After all the team members get a chance to write the word they group together and play a round of “stone, scissors, paper.” Whoever wins gets to throw the die for the team and then writes the score on the board.

This activity is great for a few reasons. For you as a teacher, it takes you mostly out of the center of the student’s learning experience. It’s not a teacher centered activity. Which is a good thing. Students learn best when they find the answers, discover or feel like it’s coming from them, not you. Think of yourself as a friend and a facilitator in the classroom.

This activity is competitive.

I’ve attended teaching seminars where the instructor looked down on any kind of competitive activities. I disagree. We live in a competitive world and trying to buck this fact makes no sense to me.

Competition is a powerful element for creating energy in the classroom. Just make sure things don’t get out of control like one of the students becomes vindictive or violent.

If things get a little too heated up, bust it up by asking everyone how many fingers while you hold a few in the air. This is great to use, if you want to move the student’s focus radically which is what it takes to clean up issues in seconds. Sure it does not deal with the root but with 50 minutes a week together, there just is no time for long drawn out interventions.

One of the big things I’m always teaching is to keep these kids moving! This activity does that well. Keeping them moving keeps the energy fresh! Good Luck!