Play Time! Interactive Learning Activities

Should you get into one of those “teaching block” moments and teaching your children suddenly becomes tedious and you have that feeling that you are not getting anywhere with them: the children are not having fun with their learning and not getting the skills they need to have from your lessons, then, this could be a solution – the Interactive Learning Games. There is nothing better than to involve your children in learning games. Children love to play games, use that to teach your children their lessons. Design the teaching of your lessons so the children will have fun and are still learning. Games are a great way to revive your class. Here are a couple of them:

Four Corners
Choose a student to be “it”, and have the “it” face the blackboard with eyes closed. Have the children go to any four corners of your room. The teacher should assign every corner a number. The pupil chosen as “it” calls one corner and the students who run to that corner are captives and can be released if they answer a question from current lessons that are being reviewed or drilled. Should a child not be able to answer your question, then he is asked to sit down. Next time, the child will strive to study harder so as not to be asked to get out of the game.
Variation: This game could be used in all subjects that you need to drill and review lessons on. Make sure that you have the list of questions from lessons ready before you start the game.

Let’s Play Baseball!
Divide the class into two teams. Assign a recorder to tally scores on the blackboard. Then assign he bases (use the four corners of the room if necessary). The teacher serves as the pitcher for both playing teams. The leaders of both teams could agree who is first to play by tossing a coin. For spelling lessons, the teacher as the pitcher, would throw an imaginary ball to the player who will bat while simultaneously ask him to spell a word. The “batter” should spell the word as fast as he can before the teacher has his hand down. The “batter” should be given only a one time chance for a strike out to keep the game moving fast. Three strike outs would eliminate a team from continuing playing. and the next team will be called to play. The recorder gives the team that gets a run, a point. The team with the most points after a designated time will be the winner.
Variation: This game could be used for all subjects that require short responses.

Tic-tac- toe Game
Group the children to form a team with nine in each group.
When a group is called to play the game, the nine students from each team line up in three rows of three. Teams should compete with one another. Ask the students questions from lessons learned, and if the students are able to answer the teacher’s questions, and they are in a “tic-tac-toe” position, that is they are in a diagonal or straight line, then they shout- Tic-tac- Toe and their team is declared the winner. Limit the questions to ten.
Variation: Assign a number to each student in your class. Have one student ask a classmate an answer to a question from any lessons the teacher would like to have drilled or reviewed by saying: Tic-tac-toe number, say “20”. The student assigned that number should be alert and stand up and answer the question. If he/she is able to answer the question, then it is his/her turn to ask the question. If a student is unable to answer a question, then he/she is taken out of the game and his/her number should not be called out. If a student happened to call that number, he/she is too, is out of the game. The game continues until the teacher decides that he/she got the number of winners he/she wanted.