The ideas here need nothing other than a readily available stock of standard basic resources such as:
- various types of paper, A4 card, pens, pencils, crayons, felt tips
- sellotape, mini-staplers, hole punchers, glue sticks
- dice, counters, scissors, paper fasteners, plasticene or playdough
- mini whiteboards and pens that work
- plastic 2D shapes for drawing round, measuring tapes
- if possible: magnifying glasses, digital cameras, stop-watches
- KWL grids- for recording 'What I already Know; what I Want to know, and what I have Learned
- Self/Peer assessment sheets
And on to the ideas...
Jabberwocky
Use this link
to go to the Lewis Carroll nonsense poem Jabberwocky. Read it two or three times to the class, and ask them to choose a part to illustrate. As so much of it is totally made up, they can't go wrong!
Next week's exciting episode...
Write the next episode of a favourite TV programme (discuss - they choose), as either a prose narrative, play script, bullet-pointed list, storyboard or story map.
Bookmarks
Design bookmarks. Fold an A4 sheet of plain paper into half lengthways, then halve again, cut into strips = 4 bookmarks..Themes could be genre-based, author-based, title-based, or just about reading in general.
Or you could quarter the sheet by folding it differently and make bookplate designs instead. Here's a link to My Home Library, with lots of examples from well-known illustrators to use as a stimulus. (For a wet-play activity you could download and print a stack of these for colouring).
Design a Monster
Create your own monster - draw it, give it a name, characteristics, habitat, food, likes, dislikes, skills...
Are you sitting comfortably?
Design an item of furniture for a specific purpose or character:
- a storytelling chair (or a chair for any purpose/person - fishing, beautician, dentist, writer, Father Christmas, stamp collector, wishing chair...)
- a bed for a giant
- garden furniture for comfort whatever the weather
- workbench for a scientist/carpenter/cook/artist
When you've shared a story/traditional tale/book/film clip/poem with your class, instead of YOU telling THEM what they're going to do, why not ask them for their own ideas? You might need to suggest a few starters or give a couple of examples, and it will help if you give them subject headings - Art, Maths, DT, Music, etc. Encourage them to share ideas together, and depending on their age, they could be challenged to work out how to do it - basically to come up with a lesson plan! What resources would they need? What order would things need to be done in? How long would it take? What success criteria would they have?
Then you have to decide whether to use any of their ideas!
NB - this idea also appears on the Book-based Ideas page.
Grand Designs
Design a house for a generic character:
- pirate
- witch
- teacher
- goblin
- footballer
- writer
- giant
- artist...
Measure a partner
Exactly that - pairs, with measuring tapes. Objective (if you want one): to learn how to use a measuring tape accurately/work co-operatively and collaboratively/estimate in centimetres/to learn and use the language of measurement of length.
With the class, create a list on the IWB of what they will measure, e.g. circumference of head, wrist, ankle, waist; length of arm, leg, fingers, foot; width of hand-span, arm-span, stride. Height. Is your arm-span, finger-tip to finger-tip, the same as your height?
Record; estimate, actual measurement; difference.
For younger children, use non-standard measuring items - straws/wool/ etc, and adapt as necessary.
Blurbs
Grab a book the children are unfamiliar with, don't let them see the front cover, and read them the blurb. Decide whether to give them the title. They have to write the first paragraph - or however much you want them to do. Or they have to design the front cover. Or they write a blurb for a story they've already written. Or they write a blurb for a completely new story,(effectively the synopsis of an idea for a story), swap with someone else, then write the start to each others' stories.
Time capsule
Ask the children to first talk about and then list and/or illustrate, with explanations, the items they would put in a time capsule to tell people of the future about life today. You could give them headings if you think it would help e.g. food, homes, work, leisure, clothes, music, families, luxuries, necessities, important events.
Call My Bluff
If you remember the BBC TV programme of this name, then you'll know what to do! Children work in teams of 3 or 4 and need dictionaries - they don't all have to be the same, any will do. Give them 15-20 minutes to find some words they think others in the class won't know, and choose alternative meanings for them, including the correct one. They don't have to think up the definitions - they can just take any from other words in the dictionaries. They will need to write them down somewhere - whiteboards would do.
When the teams each have two or three words ready, a team at a time reads out one of their words with the possible definitions, and the rest of the class has to vote on which they think is the real one. Teams score points when they beat the class.
Using electricity
Ask the children to list all the electrical items in their home, room by room. Then they talk in pairs or small groups about how they could change their use of any of the items in order to use less electricity. They could then either report back to the whole class, with follow-up discussion (so no marking!), or write their ideas down. This could be done individually, or collectively as a large poster for display.
Essential items
List essential items for:
- an expedition to the desert
- a trip to polar regions
- a long sea-voyage
- camping in the jungle
Rules
Instant Literacy - instruction writing. Write a set of rules for:
- a responsible pet owner
- a good parent
- a best friend
- a good team leader or captain
Instant art
Two things that are always readily available are people and objects. So you can quickly create an instant art lesson by either doing portraits or still lifes. For portraits you could ask someone to be the model (or be it yourself if you're feeling brave! Or maybe you have a gullible (sorry - helpful) TA). Or, children could do a portrait of the person sitting opposite them, or hand out mirrors for self-portraits.
For still lifes, just grab anything to hand, or get them to choose say 3 objects that they then arrange, and draw or paint.
The Magic Box
This idea has become almost as ubiquitous as Van Gogh's Sunflowers, but I'm sure there are some of you out there who haven't yet used Kit Wright's poem The Magic Box.
The link gives both the poem and an extended explanation of how it can be used.
Maths investigation
Another old-but-gold, but good when you're suddenly stuck with someone else's class or you have to ditch a planned lesson because assembly over-ran, or you just can't think of anything and it's late! Ideally you'd have a photocopied resource sheet, but you can always get the children to draw their own outlines. The basic idea is to see how many different colour combinations they can make using three or 4 colours. These could be in the form of striped seaside buckets, flags, balls etc. Example:
Red Yellow Blue Red Red Red
Red Yellow Blue Yellow Blue Yellow
Yellow Red Red Yellow Yellow Blue .....and so on
It's up to you whether you allow only two colours to be used, or insist on three (or 4) each time.
Encourage systematic working.
A development of this is placing doors and windows on the front of a house - whether the door is on the left, right or in the centre, and where you can place 2,3 or 4 windows. It can go on for ages!
Stamp values
Similar to the colour idea above, children have to see how many different combinations of postage they can make using stamps of different denominations. You choose, but it could be 1p, 2p, 5p, 10p, 20p, 25p, 50p. Change the denominations according to ability. You can do the same thing with coins, giving less experienced mathematicians coins to use to help them. You also need to decide whether you will allow them only one stamp/coin of each denomination or more. You could extend the idea to making weights, using given amounts of grammes.
Devise a quiz
Get the children to design a quiz for:
- a book or film they know
- a current topic
- a specific subject, or general knowledge
- the school
- the town or locality
Then spend some more time doing some of the quizzes! (They will need to be sure of their answers! This may involve research time...)
Advice please
Ask the children to write the advice they would give to a younger child about how to improve in a particular area or subject.
KWL grids
Have a store of these blank grids ready for when you need them. Ensure the children understand their use beforehand. There are three columns; the K is for What I already Know, the W is for What I Want to know, and the L is to be filled in later and stands for What I have Learned. You use them before starting something new. Give a blank grid to each child and get them to complete the first two columns (be aware that what they think they know may not be correct, but don't worry about that at this stage - they should discover any errors or misunderstandings as they work through the topic). The grids should be kept safe til the topic is completed, at which point the final column is filled in.
You could use them:
- in maths for any of the 4 operations, 2D or 3D shape; fractions; area & perimeter, etc.
- in science for floating & sinking, forces & energy, electricity & magnetism, any aspect of biology etc.
- in RE for any of the main religions, celebrations, religious leaders, etc.
- in History or Geography-based topics
Desert Island things...
Use the idea of Desert Island Discs and ask children to list their (tradiitonally) 8 books, films, games, foods, TV programmes,that they would take to a desert island. They can compare with their friends. Are there any common favourites?
What would you find in..?
Another listing idea - ask children to list 5 things they would find in a particular container, such as:
- the Queen's handbag
- a goblin's cave
- a hiker's backpack
- a spaceman's kit
- a giant's lair
- a fairy's (or witch's) cupboard
- the Head's office
- Santa's Workshop
- a robber's den
- etc....
This is a steal from the BBC quiz (for adults) called 'Only Connect'. Here's a link, which may help with the explanation that follows - play a game or two for yourself...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/onlyconnect/quiz/
OK - here's what you do...Children work in pairs or small groups. Each group has an A4 sheet of plain paper, (or card if you have any) and a pair of scissors. Fold the paper in half 4 times, unfold it so there are 16 rectangles - a 4x4 grid. In each row the children write four 'things' which are connected in some way. It's probably best for them to first write their ideas on individual whiteboards, so you can help with spellings & check that the connections are correct. As you'll need to give them some examples, here are a few suggestions:
- apple, orange, lemon, banana = fruit that grows on trees
- midnight, sky, royal, navy = shades of blue
- Buckbeak, Fluffy, Fang, Hedwig = magical creatures from Harry Potter
- Balu, Paddington, Winne-the-Pooh, Yogi = fictional bears
- prawn cocktail, cheese and onion, salt and vinegar, ready salted = crisp flavours
- hat, banana, dog, gun = can all be prefixed with the word 'top'
- revolving, automatic, back, trap = all types of door
- level, noon, peep, oxo = palindromes
Design-a-paint-colour
Give out paints - ready-mix being quickest - different combinations of colours maybe, randomly allocated. Children mix any colours on sugar paper, in blocks, like a paint chart you get from a DIY store. They could create shades of one colour by adding a little more white a bit at a time. Then they give each of their colours a name. If you can hide away a few odd free paint cards in advance, for the time when they're needed, you can read them some of the crazy names given to paint colours. (It's amazing to think that some people must actually earn a living doing this!! The one in my bathroom is called 'Rice Pudding'!)
Book sort
Put random piles of books on tables. Children sort them according to their own criteria, then explain their choice to the class. You could mix fiction, non-fiction & poetry, or just have fiction - there are lots of different ways they could group them, so you can do it lots of times! If you want to extend it further, you could get them to write an explanation of their choices.
12 days of Christmas
Can they work out how many gifts were received in total? Here's a link to the answer, with a breakdown of everything: (its 356):
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_gifts_are_given_in_total_in_the_song_%27The_twelve_days_of_Christmas%27
Snowflakes
It's not at all new to make paper snowflakes, but if you tell the children that no two snowflakes are the same (awesome! - I once saw a book with nothing but photographs of snowflakes and they were, indeed, all different... use this link -.http://drawnassociation.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/SnowflakesWilsonBentley.jpg ) then challenge them to create as may different paper snowflakes as they can, comparing with each other to see if any are identical. Display them all on a black or dark blue background if you can - get them to do the sticking.
They should first cut out paper circles (use your 2D shapes), then fold each circle in half, then fold that into thirds (this is the trickiest part), as snowflakes have six points. Award points for the most intricate if you like!
(Incidentally, if you don't have anywhere to put them all - send them home to extend the challenge to the family!)
Give the answer
Old but good - 'The answer's 5 - (or whatever) - what's the question?'
Words within words
Instant time-filler, well known but effective. Write a long word on the board - challenge the children to see how many smaller words they can make from the letters in the word, in any order, using each letter only as many times as it occurs in the given word.
Alphabet lists
Give a theme - animals, cartoon characters, places, types of buildings, foods, girls/boys names, etc.etc. Children find one for each letter of the alphabet. When complete, award ridiculously large numbers of points for anyone who's thought of something that no-one else has. Or do the same in French or whatever MFL you have in your school!
Name acrostics
Children write their name vertically, to create an acrostic poem (rhyming or not, as you please), to say something about themselves, e.g.
Delightful person to know
A pleasure to spend time with
Very kind to everyone
Even YOU!
Self/Peer assessment:
Devise a standard format that fits what you do and need the children to think about. Ensure the children are familiar with it. Then have lots of blank sheets for them to fill in in relation to any work they've previously done. Questions could include:
- Did this work meet the Learning objectives? (If that's appropriate for you)
- What was the best thing about this piece of work?
- What would have made this piece of work even better?
- What three things would you say were good about this piece of work?
- What do you think the next step would be?
- How many marks out of 10 would you give this piece of work? (again - only if this is appropriate for you)
Give out some resources from your standard store - whatever you can lay your hands on. Challenge them to create something - anything. If you can think fast enough you could relate it to some current work in any subject, or leave it completely open-ended. They could create some sort of game.
Close-up drawing
Give out magnifying glasses. Children select any object to draw a selected detail , or write a detailed description.
