Slap a word
Materialer: A pair of flyswatters
Space requirements: Can be done in the classroom
Instructions: Each group stand in a row three meters from the board and each group are given a flyswatter. The teacher writes numbers from 1-30 on the board or on cardboard. The teacher or a student says a sum out loud e.g. 4+7 and then the students see who is the first to ‘slap’ the number 11 on the board. The activity can be varied by having the students jump, hopscotch, crawl or run backwards to the board.
Academic variations:
Years 0-2:
In languages the alphabet could be written on the board and then the students have to hit the right letters in the word e.g. in the word ‘house’. Then the difficulty can be increased by writing words where only one is spelled correctly.
In maths the numbers between 1 and 30 and the activity could be made up of easy plus or minus calculations.
Years 3-6:
In maths bigger numbers and more complicated calculations (plus, minus, times and division) could be worked on.
In languages word classes could be written down, such as nouns, verbs and adjectives. Different sentences could be written where one of the sentences has a mistake.
In history historical periods or American presidents can be worked on.
Years 7-10:
In maths the task could be about percentages or geometrical shapes, students could workout if an example given is smaller or larger than another example.
In social studies politics could be studied by writing down political parties on the board. The teacher could name the leader of one of the parties or name some of the parties’ opinions or manifests. Examples of simplistic and basic opinions of political parties could be used.
In foreign languages gramma could be studied and the difficulty of the activity could be varied e.g. working with tense, punctuation, translation, word classes etc. Students could be asked to explain what the word on the board means in the foreign language.
In physics the task could be about the periodic table which you might to fin in a large format already.
