Games We Can Play

A great mentor of mine gave me an idea for motivating students to finish transitions faster. It's called Preferred Activity Time. I'm not sure I'm completely implementing it correctly, but in general- I give the students a certain amount of time to do things (like, put away a notebook.) Any time they save I add to their "30 minutes of allowance". Any time they waste gets taken away. At the end of the week we play games. I explained to them that we have to play 'school' games because I didn't want our principal to think we didn't do any learning! These are a few of the games we've played. They've all had varying degrees of success and failure.

Games we can play:
1. Multiple Bingo- Students color in a 100’s chart to get a bingo.
2. Count around the room- Students count up by multiples and try to beat their best time. Can also be done backwards and see who can guess where the count will end.
3. Around the World (Vocabulary, Human Bones, Factors, Arizona Regions)
4. Count Backwards (See count around the room)
5. Jeopardy! (http://jeopardylabs.com/2993) (I paid $1.00 for this cool tool to make an easy online Jeopardy game.)
6. Trashketball (Students are in teams. The first team where everyone can answer the question is given a chance to answer, if they cannot it moves onto another teach. If they get it right they get a chance to throw a piece of trash into the can for extra points.)
7. Charades (Students act out vocabulary words without speaking.)
8. Pass the Monkey! (Students start passing the monkey. When I say ‘freeze’ the monkey stops. I ask a question and the person with the monkey has to answer it before Eleven makes it back to them. If they do answer it, the person who has the money is the next person in the hot seat!)
9. Landscaper (Like around the word, but competitive 2 ways. Students start at each end of the classroom and work towards each other by defeating their classmates in a ‘question’ contest. If a student wins they move on, if they don’t they stop.)