A Peek at My Week - 2/16/14

It's Sunday, so I'm linking up with Jennifer at Mrs. Laffin's Laughings for A Peek at My Week!

Thanks to some snow and now President's Day, we are on our THIRD 4-day week in a row! I don't know how I'm going to handle going back to actual 5-day work weeks next week! Our district has standardized testing NEXT week (so soon!) and we will be spending this week reviewing test taking skills and playing some review games. Year after year, kids swear to me that they've never heard of something I know they've been taught every year since first grade, like the water cycle. So we'll be doing some review this week of things I know they *should* know, but have probably forgotten we ever discussed. You know, to make sure they remember that we really DID learn about graphs this year...AND the difference between Patriots and Loyalists!

Last year, my team and I split up the review activity responsibilities, and we ended up with three different Jeopardy games. It worked for review purposes, but we were ALL so tired of Jeopardy! This year, I deliberately looked for different games to keep our kids engaged and interested. Since they aren't finished yet most of you don't take the same standardized tests we do, I'm not going to share our actual review games, but I will share the super fun review game templates that we are using. Best of all, they were all FREE on TPT!

Love, War, and Lightning - In this game, you type your own questions into a PowerPoint template.  When students answer a question correctly, they click a treasure chest to be taken to a random prize. They can either gain or lose points, or be required to trade points with another team. I love the randomness, and the fact that they will have to do some strategic thinking!

Bazinga! - This game shares some similarities with the first one, in that there are different "prizes", and some of them aren't very helpful to your team! Prizes include adding to your score, taking away from your score or another team's score, taking one point from your team and giving it to another team. In addition to point activities, there are action prizes, which require either that team or the entire class to do silly, silly things, like standing on one foot, a 10 second crazy dance, and making animal noises. I think the kids will get a kick out of it!

Treasure Hunt - This game is PERFECT for math review, because the game board is on PowerPoint, but the questions are done on paper. It works kind of like "Punch a Bunch" from The Price is Right. There are detailed rules at the end of the PowerPoint, but basically, the teacher creates game sheets with 6 math problems on each page, and students work independently at first, then are able to compare their answers with their team. She suggests 10 minutes total per round, allowing them to work together when 4 minutes remain. Correct answers get a "punch" on the board to reveal a prize. Repeat for as many rounds as needed to review all  you want!

Flash Jeopardy Game - Ok, so I said no Jeopardy, but this one is actually pretty cool. It's a Flash game instead of the usual PowerPoint style, and it's really easy to input questions and keep score.

I'm off to watch Walking Dead with the hubby, and then finish up these review games tomorrow. Have a good week, everyone!

P.S.: I finally decided to step into Facebook world with this little blog, so if you'd like to get blog updates, freebies, and whatever else I think is worthy of sharing, head on over and "like" my page at facebook.com/chalkandapples. You can also find me on Instagram at instagram.com/chalkandapples.