Teaching > Lesson Plans, Ideas, & References

Trouble coming up wtih ideas

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jeffmiller:
Hi everyone, nice to post here for the first time. I'm always on this site reading articles and love all the help I get from everyone here. Though I browse the site a lot and have used it for making my winter camp, I still have trouble coming up with ideas for simple games to play.  Part of it might be because I always doubt how well they'll go over with my students or how my co-teacher will receive them.

I was asked to come up with some simple games to play in class to review for 5th Grade now that it's the end of the semester. I don't know why, but my mind throws a blank when this happens. Does anyone else have trouble coming up with activities?

I have a huge 14 page file of games from A to Z and another with 98 games. I played some simple games and did some good creative activities for my winter camp, but I guess I suck at narrowing my thoughts down and find a simple game to last 10-20 minutes of class.

Anyone have this problem? Anyone reviewing without using bomb, pass the ball, or other technology using games? How did you do it?.. I know..this sounds pathetic. Thanks for your help though.

Van:
I know.... I have the same problem. I get overwhelmed when coming up with ideas. I'm so burnt out on bomb games  :o and I still have another week of review with the kids. You just have to roll with it, and think about what's going to engage and educate the kids the most. Put yourself in your shoes/remember when you were a kid and what worked for you. Try to find something that utilizes learning style. I hope this helps.

Paul:
So simple time fillers that don't require anything more than a pen and paper?

1. Jumbled Words

Put some jumbled words on the board. Unscramble.

2. ROT13

Put some ROT 13 words on the board. Decode. I have a font for this linked below if you can put MS Word up on screen.

3. Gap Words

Put up words with blanks. Or even just draw the shape of a word and have the students try to determine what it is. Again, I have a font.

4. Happy Face / Missing Letters Game

Also known as Hangman. Don't actually hang a man. Seriously. Legal liability is bad.

5. Hot Seat Game

Best if you split the class into groups. Groups take turns to play. The active group gets to choose one student to sit in the Hot Seat which faces away from the board. Probably best if this is the loudest student. Draw a picture on the board (or pull one up in Google Image Search beforehand if you have PC access). Students may speak only English and not say the word itself to give hints to the Hot Seated player, who must guess the picture. To score, time how long it takes for the Hot Seated player to get the correct answer, or cap the time at 2 mins. After a round or two, count the cumulative time. Lowest wins.

6. Pictionary

Google it if you must.

7. Real Life Guess Who

Never done this myself, but seemingly you can do it. Else just go the traditional route only play it competitively. Stick a board up on screen or a printed poster up and play as a class. Without marking off deductions, the students must have a good memory to win.

8. Criss-Cross

Draw a class plan on the board and then cross off some of the seats to make a pattern. You can cross them all off if you want. All students are to now stand up. Get out a ball and ask for a volunteer to raise their hand. Pass them the ball and ask a question. If they get it correct, they can choose one of 5 groups to sit down: "Left", "Right", "Front", "Back", "Just Me". Naturally for the directions, all the people in that direction AND the student him/herself must sit down. If a seated student is told to sit, you can have them stand up. Time the class in terms of turns to see how few it takes to have the sitting vs standing students in a given pattern. Maybe record class highscores on a wall chart somewhere.

9. Pass the Bomb

Really, all you need is an egg timer and an opaque box, else there are digital resources on this site. Set the timer, put it in the box and give it to a student. They pass it around and must give an answer to a given question written on the board (eg: "What did you do yesterday?") Students may not pass the bomb to the next student until they have answered. The answer must also be different from the two students who directly preceded them (demonstrate this visually).

10. Draw by Preposition

Easier to demonstrate this to explain it to you. Grab some scrap paper and a pen now. No, seriously. You, the person reading this on Waygook.org. You, Adrian. Now draw a big circle in the middle. Next, draw a big triangle under the circle. In the circle, draw two small circles. Drwa a crescent moon under the small circles. On the big circle, draw two small triangles. Next to the big triangle, draw another crescent moon. On the count of three, hold up your sheet.
...1
...2
...3
You've probably just draw some sort of cat-demon thing. They all end up as cat demons regardless of what you intended.

11. Bingo

A pile of spare blank bingo boards in the corner of the room is better than no pile of spare blank bingo boards in the corner of the room.

For structured review, I know I've got a sentence search, tic-tac-toe board or treasure hunt (battleships) gameboard up on this site for most units in the primary school books plus a bunch of review crosswords. You can also have them do things like count syllables in words. My students go absolutely gangbusters for the Pokemon Syllables Game. Finding and identifying syllable breaks helps them a LOT with reading and pronunciation.

Today we did a snowball fight which the students seemed to like.

To do this, have them write the answer to some question on some paper without their name on it and possibly draw a picture. Stress the importance of a) no names b) beautiful handwriting and c) terrible pictures. The last one is so no up and coming artist cries at Step 2. Next, have them scrunch up the paper and spend the duration of a song pegging them at one another. Once the music stops, they're to pick up the nearest "snowball" and return to their seats. Once everyone is seated, have them stand again and walk around the room asking the question. Students must answer with the answer on their piece of paper. After both answer, swap papers. Goal is to repeat until a student finds his/her own answer (hence a crummy picture to identify).

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