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Your green pages: 75 specific skill-building activities you can use right now!

Teaching Pre K-8, Nov/Dec 1999

WORD PLAY

LANGUAGE ARTS AND MATH: Read aloud Holes by Louis Sachar (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1998). Use character Stanley Yelnats to introduce palindromes (words and numbers that read the same forward and backward) Keep a list during the year as students watch for them. The next step could be to write anagrams (words or phrases made by rearranging letters in a word).

DID YOU SEE?

PERCEPTION: Give everyone a copy of a magazine or newspaper picture, article or advertisement. Let students study it for a few minutes, then turn it over. Ask questions about the item. See how observant students are.

RATIO RIDDLES

MATH: Pose questions such as: I have 12 pencils and four pens. What is the ratio? I have one eraser for every three pieces of chalk. What is the ratio? After students grasp the concept, they invent their own questions.

DIGIT PROBLEMS

MATH: Make a list of at least four single-digit numbers. Challenge the students to come up with a math problem using only the numbers on the list, and using each number only once.

EXAMPLE: List: 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. Problem: 47 6 = 53 or 36 7 = 43.

COMPOUND CHALLENGE

LANGUAGE ARTS: Name half of a compound word. The students take turns naming another half that goes with the first half to make a complete compound word. Then name another half that goes with the second word, and another half that goes with the third. ExAMPLE: head, headlight, lighthouse, houseboat, etc.

FRACTION ACTION

MATH: Review fractions, explaining that the bottom number, or denominator, tells how many equal parts into which something can be divided. Name pairs of fractions and have the students identify which is the larger.

FROM HERE TO THERE

MATH: Name two numbers. Challenge the students to find as many ways as possible to get from the first number to the second, using any of the four basic operations.

PERSONAL ANALOGY 74

LANGUAGE ARTs: Students answer Questions such as "If I were a math test, what size would I be? What color? What would I feel as someone wrote on me? If I were an orange, what would I try to avoid? Who would I like to live with? Why? Invite students to invent questions to swap with classmates.

HABITATS

SCIENCE: Have students consider buildings they're familiar with, such as houses, apartment buildings, an office, community center or school building. Ask them to think of all the plants that grow on the inside (house plants, potted trees, mold) and the outside (moss, grass, lichen, ivy) of such buildings. Ask them to name all the animals that live on the inside (cats, dogs, fish cockroaches, mice, houseflies) or outside (birds, ants, bees) of those buildings. Have them consider how all those living things depend on the building and how those things, in turn, affect both the building and the people living in it. They should consider what environmental conditions in the building attract and support these organisms.

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