Bright ideas for this week

Preferred Activity Time (PAT)
"The underlying premise to PAT is this: If the children give me time to teach, then I have time to give them to play an educational game -- and I am still teaching. I use PAT as a reward for the time the class earns for positive behaviour, minus the negative behaviour. They earn minutes/seconds for positive, appropriate behaviour, and they lose minutes/seconds for negative, inappropriate behaviour. These are minutes earned for the entire class. Some examples your teachers might like to try include:

Adjective Charades
Hand out to each student a slip of paper that contains an adjective-noun phrase, such as raging river, hungry boy, or glowing fire. The student must act out the phrase for the class to guess. The child who is the first to guess correctly gets to act out the next phrase or, if that child has had a turn, choose a person to act it out.

Buzz
Students sit in a circle and take turns counting in sequence from 1 to 100. Every time a number has a seven in it or a multiple of seven, the student says "Buzz." For example: "1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, Buzz, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, Buzz, 15, 16, Buzz, 18, 19, 20, Buzz, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, Buzz, Buzz ..." If a student misses, the class starts over. This time, a different student starts the game. The class wins when the students finally reach 100. This game can be played with different numbers.

Charades
Hand out to each student five slips of paper on which to write the name of a famous person, a book title, a cartoon character, a song, or a sports figure -- one per slip. Divide the class into two teams. One person acts out what is on a paper for his or her team mates to guess. If they guess the correct answer in the time allotted, the group gets a point.

Endless Chain
Divide the class into teams; each team starts with 10 points. Choose a category, such as "cities," and have the first team give a word within that category. The next team notes the last letter of the word given and gives a word that fits the category and begins with that letter. Teams take turns until a team cannot continue the chain. (Within a chain, no word can be repeated.) A team that cannot continue the chain loses a point. Choose a new category, and the teams begin a new chain.

PAT = FUN + LEARNING