Paper Airplane Team Game

Here's a fun Team Game that would work great the day before a Big Test.

First, have each team make a paper airplane out of their team color. Click here for a good website for patterns and instructions. Give each team a piece of paper in their team color. They can choose an "expert" to make their favorite plane.

Establish a line at one end of the room. Have the teams line up behind the line. Or you can have one person per team come up to the line and the rest stay seated.

Put signs on different classroom objects that assign points, such as: chalkboard-5 points, teacher's desk-10 points, trashcan-20 points, etc.

Ask a Color Team a question and after a Team Huddle, the student in the front of the line answers for the team. If the answer is correct then that student gets a chance to throw their team's paper airplane and try to hit one of the target objects to win points.

Keep track of points and give the winning team a prizel such as: a free homework pass worth 10 points, or candy, or a new pencil, you name it!

The Questions could be similar to the ones on your test. They could be the exact Test Review Questions the students have already completed. They could be a review of what you've taught in the last couple of days.

CONSIDER THIS: Allow each student to bring their test review with them to the Team Game Table, which rewards those who do their homework!

CONSIDER THIS: Add a Paper Airplane Team Game to your arsenal of tricks!

Find Someone Who...

Find Someone Who... is a basic classroom team game.

If you Google it, you will find it all over the Internet. But mostly just as a First Week, get to know people, activity. Which is fine, don't get me wrong!

But it can be adapted to just about anything you are teaching and is a good, quick game that gets your students out of their seats and busy interacting with others AND trying to remember what they've learned lately.

Basically, you have about five things on a sheet of paper; such as:

Find Someone Who... (Basic First Week)

1. has lived in another state
2. has more than 3 siblings
3. speaks a language other than English
4. is taller than you
5. is an only child

OR

Find Someone Who... (Cloud Week)

1. can describe a cumulus cloud
2. can define "lenticular"
3. can list three "high" clouds
4. can sketch a cumulonimbus cloud
5. can list the weather associated with a nimbus cloud

OR

Find Someone Who... (Planet Week)

1. can list the four inner planets
2. can list the five outer planets
3. knows how Pluto is now categorized
4. knows what's in between the inner and outer planets
5. can list three unique characteristics of Earth

The rules are simple.

• You can sign a sheet only once.
• You can't sign your own sheet.

I absolutely loved getting my kids up and out of their seats for a quick leg-stretch. But with an educational goal in mind. If you have ever attended a teacher convention, think how you felt sitting all day listening to expert after expert talk-talk-talk. Exhausting work. Or think back to your college days!

How can we ask kids to sit quietly without fidgeting all day when it's hard for most of us to do the same!

Which is why I like to get kids up. If you don't trust yourself to get your students sitting back down in their seats quietly and quickly, you need to work more on classroom procedures. It IS possible to have kids up and down all period with a minimum of fuss and bother. It's just a matter of training them properly. Click here for more details on this.

CONSIDER THIS: Add more leg-stretching games such as FIND SOMEONE WHO. Make up a quick review game today and use it tomorrow!

FUN LINKS: click here for an example of Basic First Week.
Click here for an example of Find Someone Who Knows Safety.