Read and toss

This was posted on Twitter which I thought would be a great starter. I'm going to use it this week by asking students to write their own sentences on strips of paper that they then screw up and throw. Maybe a word limit for each sentence so all teams have similar length sentences. The activity could then be a competition. 

Pound shop challenge!

A colleague of mine gave all staff at my school the challenge of going to a pound shop over the holidays to find a teaching and learning resource. Here is what I found and have come up with:

Soft Ball

1. Throw the ball to a student and they must answer a question. Then throw it back for me to throw to another. I ask the questions.

2. Same as above but students throw the ball to each other asking their own questions.

3. Divide the class into two teams. They ask the other team a question. If the team gets it right, one student is allowed to try to get the ball in the bin/ box. The team with the most goals wins.

4. Musical ball - students pass the ball around the class and when the music stops, the student holding it answers a question.

5. 2 lines facing each other about 2m apart. The ball is passed back and forth zigzagging down the two lines. Students have to say a keyword before they throw it to the next person. This could be timed.

Playing Cards

1. Students take a card as they enter. Hearts must do one starter, clubs another etc.

2. Random way of putting students into groups.

3. Students take a card as they enter. Code on the board gives them a letter and they have to think of 5 keywords beginning with that letter.

4. Writing activity with 4 categories (eg school subjects, opinions, snacks, past tense). Each team picks 4 cards which corresponds to each category. The cards they pick will determine how many of each category they will need to include in their writing. This could be done as a competition.

5. Students take a card as they enter. Each suit and each letter corresponds to a category. Students have one minute to think of as many keywords as possible for that category or they have one minute to talk about the category

Race whispers or silent spelling

Choose three sentences for the race. Get students into teams of 6-7 students. All students need to say the whole sentence. Teams have to race to be the first to finish. It works well when students are sitting across the room so you can see and hear everything. I asked the last person to stand when they had finished so I could clearly see who had won. It gets quite loud even though they were supposed to be whispering!

Instead of whispering, students at the back of each team are given a word which they spell out using their finger on the back of the person in front. The word is passed on through the team in this way and the front person writes it down on a piece of paper.