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!

Chop Suey - Perfect Testing Review Dishes

I have a late one for you readers. I had the best time with this lesson, and I couldn't wait to share it... but, I had to do some Spring Breaking first! So here it is, my Chop Suey review lessons. This is a great, interactive way to connect students with the text and to check their comprehension. Let me start with the prep for this lesson first.

I was able to get a dozen to-go boxes, a dozen sets of chopsticks, and a dozen fortune cookies for $3 from my local Chinese restaurant. I made an 11pm run, so I was willing to pay much more. I was floored and so appreciative of the deal. "I'm a teacher" can be a powerful phrase! There are two Chop Suey lessons I've created. One is arranging a short story; the other, finding the main idea.

Story Chop Suey 
I found stories online and cut them up by sentences. For the product listed below, the stories are mine, completely original, so no worries about infringement. In each to go box, I put the story sentences on white paper that I curled. I also added the other parts, title choice and ending choice. Titles were printed on one colored paper, and story endings were printed on another. Students were instructed to put the white "noodles" in order, using all of them. They were then instructed to choose the BEST title and the BEST ending to the story. Once everything had be chopsticked out of the to go box and taped down, students read their story one more time. When they decided as a group that their story sounded correct, I gave them a story key to check their work.

Main Idea Chop Suey
I put out 8 boxes around the room, and in each box, I put 4 sentences. One sentence was the main idea. I timed the students to see how quickly they could find the main idea. When they were finished picking out the main idea with their chopsticks, I ran to check their answers and told them how many were right, how many were wrong. 

After they had them all correct, I asked students to tell me the main idea and use the phrases from the anchor chart to cite and defend why they thought they'd chosen the main idea correctly. Once finished, we checked the key to see the sentences together.

My ESOL kids loved using the chopsticks. Some had never had the opportunity to try. My students did a great job, and it gave us all a lot of confidence in their reading and comprehension. I've created the packets below that would be convenient for you to purchase; but honestly, plenty of stories are available online, too.

Get out there and get those Chinese food supplies. I'm still figuring out how many ways I can use them. For all of those testing now or in the near future, good luck to you and your kids. Hope they're all kissing and nurturing their brains! Before I link the product from TPT, here is a fortune cookie message. One fortune for you, one fortune for your students.

I hope the pictures help you see what is going on and how you can use the product. You simply print the pages, some on different colored paper, then cut the sentences into strips. Curling is optional, but if you plan on integrating the chopsticks, it makes it more manageable. Flat sentence strips may be impossible to pick up, and that's coming from a pro.... basically! Click on the images below to purchase your own copy on TPT.

Good luck! Thanks ahead of time for any feedback.

Update... Tumble Towers for 3rd - 5th Grades

Slowly, but surely folks. As promised, I'm creating additional Tumble Towers sets. To see the original post, click HERE. For now, ELA review for 3rd grade is up on Teachers Pay Teachers. Click on the cover to get your copy! It is the eve of Friday. I hope everyone is anticipating a restful and fun weekend! 

I can't wait to tell you when 4th grade ELA Tumble Towers is posted. I really can't wait until I attack the other subjects. Have fun with this one!

Happy day! It is finally here! Fourth grade ELA Tumble Towers have arrived. So that covers all testing grades' review sets for ELA. If you're using these, please let me know how the kids are doing with it. Click on the cover to find all Tumble Tower sets on TPT.

And if you missed out the 5th grade ELA Review Tumble Towers, click below.

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.