I start Back to School with my kiddos this week and I CAN NOT WAIT!
There are three items that I just can NOT do without during a school year.
1. Scoot cards/Task cards
2. ZAP games
3. Mystery pictures
Scoot or Task Cards are THE go to activity in my classroom.
Versatile beyond measure, they can be used as a whole class activity, as part of a literacy center for individual cstudents, or for small group instruction or practice. The traditional game of Scoot is only one way to use these activity cards. Images of cards can be uploaded to Quizizz or Plickers for a fun online, digital assessment for your students. Combine bingo cards with task cards for a new twist on an old game. I have created and purchased task cards for nearly every skill that I present to my middle schoolers: kinds of sentences, nonfiction text structures, antonyms, multiple meaning words, the periodic table, etc. Because I teach in a Catholic School, I have even created Scoot cards that incorporate aspects of our faith: All Saints' Day, Stations of the Cross, St. Lucy, St. Patrick, and MANY more.
ZAP games are without a doubt my students' favorite activity!
High paced and engaging, I have used ZAP (originally called BOOM or KABOOM) in my classroom for over 35 years. Such a simple game to assemble and institute, you simply include skill items on slips of paper, along with a few ZAP slips, place them in a container and have students pull the slips and answer the question/problem...and the FUN begins when the first ZAP slip is drawn! Read more about how to play this awesome game HERE.
I've made and used ZAP games for nearly every skill I've ever presented to my classes as well, and have even incorporated religious themes in them, too. Deb Hanson from Crafting Connections affectionately dubbed me "The Queen of ZAP" after I introduced her to this fun, engaging game.
It's no mystery that Mystery Pictures take the sting out of humdrum skill practice!
What's a mystery picture you ask? It's a color by skill activity. Given a grid of words and a color key, students determine the type of word in each box of the grid, color it its corresponding color, and reveal a hidden picture as they work.
The mystery pictures that I design and publish all deal with ELA skills, particularly identifying parts of speech. My students no longer mumble or grumble when they have to identify types of nouns, or distinguish between adjectives or adverbs. Mystery pictures have taken the sting out of boring worksheet drills.
Don't these three teaching tools all sound FUN for your students? And you? Perhaps they may sound like something you can't live without either, especially if you teach ELA to middle grades students???
You can snag ALL of the items pictured in this post as a bundle of Back to School ELA items. Included in the bundle are THREE ZAP games, TWO Mystery Pictures, and ONE Scoot game for a total of SIX items. Normally priced at ten dollars, you can grab the bundle at a significantly reduced price. Just click HERE to download the complete bundle now.
OR enter this Rafflecopter giveaway for a TEN DOLLAR Teachers Pay Teachers gift certificate. You may be the lucky person who wins. Then you can purchase this bundle on Monday, August 22nd and save even more by using your gift card just in time for Back to School!
In the market for more Back to School items? Hope on over to XClass to the Rescue. There is a wonderful linky party going on that is featuring Back to School teaching products.
Coming back to school can be tough for both parents and their kids. When you have spent countless hours of doing nothing is it hard to get back in the game and start working your brain. That’s why this post is so helpful. It teaches us exactly what to do when we struggle to start doing homework with the kids again. I hope that these cards, worksheets and activities that the kids will bring to the first lesson will help them with being motivated and encouraged on their first day back at school. Otherwise the parents will just get help from the essay online writing without the teacher’s notice.
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