"Friday" activities (or anytime) to use in the classroom

[Gail Hennessey]

Perhaps, you may find some of the following activities useful:
Have a wonderful summer.
Gail Hennessey
http://www.gailhennessey.com
1. INITIAL ALPHABET GAME- Have teams of students write the letters of the alphabet in a downward direction. Next, ask a student to suggest a sentence or letters Have the students write the sentence or letters in a downward direction until all the letters in the first column have a “partner” letter. Give the students 7-10 minutes to try and think of famous people, places or things with two letter initials (EX. GW-George Washington, KT-King Tut, AE-Albert Einstein) Rejoin as a class and have the teams take turns giving the responses they had for the different initial patterns. Give a reward to the group with the most initials.

A E

B G

C H

D E

E J

F O

G W

H I

I G

J K
K T
L O


2. GRID Search -Give students a grid with 5 boxes by 5 boxes(or more for older students).At the topic, pick a word to use (ie: Hippo). Down the sides, have students write the following: BODY of WATER, COUNTRY, FAMOUS PERSON, CITY(you can choice other topics, too). Using reference materials/internet, have groups of students try and fill in the grid with as many answers that start with the letters at the topi(HIPPO)

H I P P O

Body of Water (Lake) Huron

Country Pakistan Portugal

Famous Person Henry Hudson

CITY Istanbul

FOOD onion



3. VOC ART. Give students a list of vocabulary words being used for a unit of study or for reading. Have the students draw a picture using all of the words and the definitions of the words.



4. REMEMBER! Find a picture in a textbook or a magazine and make copies for each student. Explain that their “powers” of observation will be the object of the activity. Give the students about 4 minutes to look at the picture. Put the paper away. Have the students take out a piece of paper and ask 5-7 questions about the picture and see which students were able to remember what they saw in the picture.



5. ALPHA VOC: Give the students a listing of the alphabet(perhaps 15 letters). As teams or individually, find as many specific words as you can that were covered in a unit of study that start with those letters of the alphabet(EX: Middle Ages: C-crusades, castle, cathedral). Give 15 minutes. Rejoin as a class. Start with the first letter on the list and tell the students if you have the word stated, raise your hand. Common words are crossed out-no points given. If you have a word that no one else has, you or your team earns 1 point. If you have a word for a letter(which the teacher accepts as part of the unit of study), you or your team earns 3 points. The team or individual with the most points , wins the AlphaVoc activity.