Exposing It - "Four-Letter Words" Review Game

Watching TV CAN be educational! I have always loved game shows, especially the ones with celebrities. Imagine my excitement when Hollywood Game Night debuted. On the first episode I caught, I found the next game for my students. I envisioned the perfect game for review. In my class, I already have the "I Used an Adult Word" wall, so it's only right that the game I discovered was "Four-Letter Words." Here is the clip I saw on TV.

For review, I came up with four letter words from all the 5th grade subjects, and we played some review. I had enough words for a few rounds. At first, I was running for the letters. By the end, my students knew how to run the game themselves. They weren't quite as fluid as I was, but they'll get it in time. See the result.

My voice screeching is so unpleasant to me!! Can you pretend to unhear me?  =)

Isn't it awesome?! Goes to show that it's fun taking risks on my lesson planning sometimes. Hope it inspires you to not to only play more in your class, but to also find inspiration anywhere. You never know what might strike you.

And a side note... I do promote play. We do play to learn a lot in my classes. Please don't think that that's all we do, but it's sure fun to share these moments, my avenue to differentiation. I think it's more fun to use my blog to expand our creativity in this manner. From other teachers, I am always researching methods like Daily 5, guided reading, writer's workshop, and on and on. I've got my eye out!

Enjoy!

Learn / Play Flash... Introducing Tumble Towers Review Game

Alright, readers, this is the first of many! I finally got around to making the product for a review/game that I created for my classes. I began, first, using JENGA for sight words. With 54 blocks, even using both sides, the same ol' sight words JENGA didn't make the rotation for centers too many times. Kids were bored, and I couldn't come up with enough extension exercises for them. That's when I threw out that box of JENGA and came up with a more sustainable option. This is my new method. I was teaching every grade accept for third last year. I had to get creative so that I wouldn't have five different JENGA sets.

Here you have it, ladies and gentlemen! I numbered the blocks!!! I then created a set for each class for whichever subject I was teaching. Now, I will say the first evolution of questions was front and back of 8.5x11 paper.  For this round, I've decided to make cards. My stock paper sheets got bent too often, and cards are kid-friendlier. 

I hope you will have patience to hang in there for upcoming products if 5th grade ELA doesn't suit your current needs, but that's what I have up, and I hope you grab your own copy. Review of any kind is great for our students, but you'll see that games and interactive activities are sort of my thing! My hope for you is that getting a JENGA set and labeling the block is simple enough. I tend to overdo it sometimes, so I'm glad to offer something pretty simple for you. 

Have a blast with this product, and as I said... Stay tuned. =)

UPDATE: 
Third grade ELA review is available now.  Click on the cover image to get your copy today.

ANOTHER UPDATE: 
Fourth grade ELA review is available now.  Click on the cover image to get your copy today.