Sunday, April 24, 2011

Classroom Games (Word Games)

Hello,

        Your favorite blogger Wintermute here giving you your daily dose of Dumbr. Today we will be discussing Word Games you can play with your students in the classroom. The purpose of these games was to get the kids talking a lot and working together. The more they talk and help each other out the better.

1.       Blindfold - I would blindfold one kid and move the desks around to make a maze or an obstacle course. I would hide a point card somewhere in the room. The object of this game was for the remaining students to vocally navigate the blindfolded student around to the card without touching any of the desks. Words you will need to teach to your students prior to playing would be turn left/right, forward, back, etc etc.

2.       Forts – Take some blocks, the bigger the blocks the better. At my school we had these very large inflatable blocks. I would have a king/captain command the other students to build a fort. He would have to tell the students to build the pieces, in, over, under, beside or behind the other pieces. They would all have to work together to figure out how to set it up, good to do with teams to see who is faster. This is a great game to teach prepositions.

3.       Telephone – Surely we have all played this game. In case you haven’t here are the Dumbr rules: pick your first student, whisper something into their ear, and have them whisper it to the next student, so on and so forth, by the end of the line have the last student tell you what the message was and see if it held up. Generally speaking students won’t try very hard with this game sadly. So you will have to find some way to keep them motivated, again points work wonders. If you are like me and do not have a whisper voice you can always write it down on a piece of paper.

Music Games

1.       Hokey Pokey – We all know hokey pokey and it’s a pretty long song that can get rather tedious fast. So instead of doing the usual motions replace them with something a bit more fun. I tend to do things like; tongue, eyes, hair, and a class favorite, butt.

2.       One little two little three little fingers – I won’t go over the whole song but it’s pretty straight forward. Count your little fingers up to ten, when you reach ten, tickle a student. This however can be a lot of work for the lazy teacher, so after a while have your students do it instead.

3.       Ratchet and Clank – If you haven’t noticed I steal a lot of ideas from video games. Here is another one of those ideas. In Ratchet and Clank Tools of Destruction, Ratchet must disguise himself as pirate and dance a jig with fellow pirates to prove his worth. He is issued a series of commands such as, to the left, to the right, to the sky, and of course, shake your booty. Well guess what, now you too can play this otherwise artificial time filler with your students in class.

A lot of these games stemmed from my lack of knowledge on how to play with kids, and my greater knowledge of how to play video games. You can use these tools to your advantage as well.  Be sure to come back tomorrow for more Dumbr.

Your Teacher,
Wintermute

41 comments:

  1. Dumbr, Dumbr, you bad teacher! No name calling! I am not SHORT, I might possibly be taller than thou. I'm above average height for a woman!

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  2. nice stuff man, keep it up

    i like the ratchet and clank one the best

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  3. Played some of these games during Kindergarten ahha. Thanks.

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  4. I like it. Thanks for sharing. :)

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  5. sounds fun. I want to be 7 agian. :)

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  6. You never cease to amaze me with your blogs man

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  7. Duck Duck Goose is a fun game for the kiddies too... :)

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  8. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

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  9. Have you ever played 7 up in school? that game was my favorite.

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  10. =D nice facelift! bleh I wish I had your structure and drive. Thanks for all your info!

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  11. oh yeah 7 up heads up, why didnt I think of that. I'm going to have to play that. and theres nothing wrong with being short, embrace it!

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  12. Man I wish you were my teacher.

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  13. These games sound a lot of fun. I would rather play games than study. :P

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  14. haha those kids must be having a blast! I remember the telephone game when I was a kid, everyone always messed up the words and it had a completely different meaning lol

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  15. Blindfold: Game in my school to make the guy we are hating that day to get hurt or get close to a girl he likes ^^ obviously we did this when the teacher wasnt there, i still dont know why there were people willing to play again after all they did to them

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  16. ratchet and clank was an amazing game series when it was still on ps2 only.

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  17. LOL that game is one of the bests!

    and I'm not going to embrace shortness, I LOVE being tall with long legs! 5'10 and proud of it!

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  18. I remember 7up. Thanks for this mate.

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  19. LOL u jelly I'm taller then you? :3

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  20. OH so I am taller, ahahahahhahahahahahahahah, shorty.

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  21. Never played Telephone. Sounds fun heh

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  22. games look good for communication development

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  23. we always did such kind of games :)

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  24. this made me remember a game we use to play in elementary called thumbs up 7 up, wonder if people still play that game.

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  25. these are some great ideas!! thanks for the awesome post :)

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  26. Ratchet and Clank! I love you :D

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  27. in england they call the telephone game "chinese whispers"

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  28. very nice love your blogs there very good

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  29. You're a wigger for that comment you left me ! lmaoo Bad Teacher! :)

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  30. Shoot, i wanna play these games now. Haha.

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