By Curtis Bloomfield
Curtis Bloomfield is a 2012-2013 corps member serving on the Bain and Company team at the Hennigan Elementary School in Jamaica Plain.
The cone word game.
According to the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, the Hennigan Elementary School was listed as “among the lowest performing 20 percent of schools.” The school community is working toward improving students’ English language arts (ELA) test scores. Course work and lesson plans are designed to strengthen ELA skills every day and Hennigan is so determined that they have even incorporated ELA-focused games into gym class.
Ms. Dultz, the gym teacher at the Hennigan, created some great games. She shows that working on improving our ELA skills can be fun. Here are two of her activities:
The cone word game works to improve student fluency and vocabulary. To play, Attach a verb or a noun card to 20 to 25 cones (see picture on the right) and scatter them on the floor. The students are separated into two teams, the verb and noun teams. One player from each team starts.
The noun player runs to find a verb cone as fast as she can. Once the player finds the verb cone, she has to show understanding by acting out what the verb is. For instance, if the verb on the cone were jumping jacks, the player would demonstrate jumping jacks. Then, she knocks the cone over, to show that it’s already been found and used. The verb player does the same with the noun cones, only instead of acting out the word, he only has to yell out the noun he found before knocking the cone over.
After knocking over the cone, the player runs back and tags the next runner, who repeats the process.
The first team to find and enact all their words first wins! After one round of this game students have a better understanding of verbs and nouns. When we switched teams for the second round, students on both sides were easily able to find which cones were verbs and which cones were nouns.
Word laps is a game that resembles track. The course can be made out of cones, or students can just run circles around the gym. The facilitator of the game holds a small plastic bag of tiny foam letters. After each lap they run, students draw a letter.
After each runner earns two or three letters, they divide into teams of four. Using only the letters they’ve drawn, they must try to spell as many words as they can in 10 to 15 minutes.
The words must to be at least three letters. For every five-letter word, or longer, that the team spells, they receive an additional point. The team with the most points wins.
Can your students beat our record? One team was able to come up with 24 words; 12 of those words were six-letters each (more than enough to win them the game).
These two ELA focused games have helped students do just that—focus. Games such as these are what help the students of the Hennigan see that learning can be fun and easy.
Looking for more energetic games and ideas? Check out:
- Color Tag on Playworks’ blog.
- Games and the Common Core via Eutopia.
