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Sunday 2 February 2014

Bright Ideas! Hop on!



I was so happy to participate in this Bright Ideas Blog Hop!  
I bet there are millions of fabulous ideas floating around in classrooms everyday, but I am just going to share one with you before you hop off to the next fantastic blogger!

I love to use cards and dice for games in the classroom, especially as a sub.  You can pretty much be guaranteed the classroom you are in will have them and if not, they are easy to carry in your bag.

First I wanted to share with you how I use one game and differentiate it for the different abilities in the class.
This game is a card game that I call Higher or Lower.  I'm sure it has other names like War or something like that, but meh, I like to be specific.


The basic premise is that students decide if the other player has to get a number higher or lower than the other player, then they turn over however many cards you as the teacher has decided on.  These players have turned over three because we were focussing on place value but if you had kiddos who needed to focus on 1 digit or 2 digit numbers you would tell those kiddos to turn over the appropriate number of cards.  When one player wins they get to keep theirs and their opponents cards, play continues until all the cards are gone.  
I love that I can have kiddos working on different skills with this game as well and they can venture into adding or subtracting 2 or more numbers.  I make sure my pairs are at a reasonably even level of ability so that they are both getting the practice they need.

Now onto a dice game that is great to use in any classroom.  
I like to use this game in many different ways.  We call it Race to________ (whatever number you want!)  I play this using number charts to 100 or 200.  I also play this with Kinders using counters to create towers.




Depending on the abilities you can give kiddos dot dice or number dice, they can build towers to 10 or beyond that number.  They love to see who can build the highest tower first.....and they are counting while having fun!  

I hope you are able to take a couple of these ideas into your classroom this week!  Now the best part you get to hop over to Mary at Teaching with a Mountain View to check out her bright idea for some quick and creative ideas for improving critical and creative thinking!  WOW!

2 comments:

  1. I love dice games! And kids do, too. It's an easy way to make learning content engaging and fun! Thanks for sharing this post!

    Buzzing with Ms. B

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  2. Thanks Chrissy! I am loving this blog hop, hope you are too.

    ReplyDelete