Well, of course I meant to post this last weekend, but once again I ran out of time.
On the Friday before the Writing STAAR Test, I decided to have a pep rally for my students. Our aide and I made lots of banners with positive sayings on them (which I used to cover my walls). I also had a banner on the floor for the kids to sign for the 5th graders. Earlier in the week, the 3rd graders made one for us.
Then, we played a writing review football game. My classroom has a Mimio which can turn any whiteboard and projector into an interactive whiteboard. I downloaded this football game template from the Mimio Connect website and inserted my own questions. Now, I have to admit that I did not write the questions myself. I used task cards that I had purchased from Teachers Pay Teachers.
The class was split into 2 teams. We had a coin toss to see who would go first. This game came with a lot of options, but I decided to keep it simple. Each team could decide how many yards they wanted to go for. Either 5, 15, or 30 yards. If the student answered correctly, they advanced that many yards. If they did not, it was considered a fumble and the next student on the opposite team had a chance to answer it correctly to recover the fumble. In that case, they would start from where the ball ended. If they answered incorrectly, it goes back to the original team.
Once a team made it to the opposite side, it was a touchdown. Again, to keep it simple and moving quickly, each touchdown was worth 1 point. I tried to make the questions increasingly more difficult as the yardage increased. I even had some revising and editing questions about a short passage I had posted on the whiteboard.
The kids had a blast and it was a fun way to get ready for the test. Originally, I was going to make a small field with the fake grass you can buy at Lowe's or Home Depot and have the kids move an actual football. Unfortunately, the grass is still sitting in the back of my car waiting to be painted.
Ahh, maybe next year.
Labels: Games, STAAR
