Engaging ALL of your small group students – ALL of the time. Sounds a bit daunting right?!?! Especially if you are herding cats working with kindergartners – I mean.
Well I have found there are ways to keep all your students engaged even if you are playing a game and it’s not their turn. Yep, it’s possible friends and the conversations that were happening at my small group table throughout the game made my heart so happy! Things like: “I remember how to spell that word without even looking at the fly it was a spelling word last week.” OR
” Wait, I know that first part it’s an ‘h’ brother. ” etc. I love when they recognize word patterns, chunks, etc. in their reading or spelling.
We started out by playing our fly swat the sight word game.
At first glance, kids have to take turns swatting sight words with a swatter and reading them.
What are the other kids doing?!?! Well, when we play this game first we roll the die! I know, I know it sounds strange – it’s not a board game but for real.
Child A – rolls the die. They swat words in front of them on a plaid placemat of course that many times as they read them aloud. Next, that child spells the word(s) out with their magnetic letters and then they write the word(s) on their white board. Not only does this take #allthetime until their next turn but it gives them a multisensory experience with their sight words :
visually~ seeing them,
auditory ~ saying/hearing them, kinesthetic ~ spelling them out with magnetic letters OR you can use my squishy bags or salt boxes even. Then lastly writing them…see the secret here, all this takes a while. They are staying engaged by doing these, focusing on the sight words they read and while they are waiting for their turn they are so BUSY doing the other things their turn comes up again quite quickly.
If you don’t have a die like this you can also use a sand timer and see how many they can swat and say before the sand timer runs out. Also I like the die because with the write on numbers I can control the numbers on there. If I stick to smaller numbers it’s not as overwhelming as it would be if they had to swat, say, build and or write 5 or 6 words as they would on a regular set of dice.
We do it with several of our sight word games/activities. Here they are picking snowflakes out of a winter sensory bin and after they pull one out and say it I had them write it 3 times. They are proud to say and write it, it reinforces the word and again it takes time so they are engaged and before they know it – it’s their turn again.
I love these sight word sensory bins because they also put a focus on fine motor skills. I was surprised at how much trouble some of my students had with working the tongs to grab a sight word snowflake. This activity is working so many things at once developmentally for them.
I hope these ideas can be used in your classroom, just a write on die ( from Dollar Tree ) some tongs, a sand timer, white board and magnetic letters can make your time more efficient and engaging for your littles with games you may already have in your classroom!
Happy teaching!
