Classroom teachers are always looking for inexpensive yet rigorous activities for their students. With a little bit of patience and ingenuity you can find plenty of resources already under your fingertips!
CARDBOARD COVERS
Go into your recycling bin and cut the covers off of each of the items in there. This will get you started. Every time you go to toss something else into your recycling bin take the face off and start filling an envelope. In a very short time you should have a good amount to start using in your classroom. I cut the cardboard faces off of everything from granola bars to cleaning supplies. Once you have enough you can use them for the following:
ABC ORDER
The long forgotten skill that kids don’t know how to do anymore! I pass out a cardboard cover to each of them. Without talking to each other I have them line up from A to Z based on the brand name of their product. You can switch things up and do it Z to A after they swap covers with another.
PERIMETER & AREA
Using these covers is a fun way to practice these math skills. The teacher might need to be a little deliberate in the cutting to eliminate having to round up or multiple fractions/decimals. This could be a great quiet center activity with a simple record sheet. The students could even check their accuracy on their own!
WRITING CENTERS
These covers can encourage students to write advertisements for the products or even opinion pieces on how their product is the best around. The students could even work on a new version of the product that they would have to present to the class. Teachers love those ideas that can work on their speaking and listening skills as well!
PIXAR SHORT MOVIES
Faces light up when kids start talking about the creative shorts that have been created for entertainment. Many of these can be found on YouTube.com. Pixar's shorts are especially great for classroom use because of the lack of dialogue. Make sure to watch them fully before you share with your class.
INFERENCE
It is a creative way to help my students think about the difference between the terms explicit and inferred. I created an evidence chart that guides the students to support statements with evidence from the short. This is a great way to scaffold into finding evidence from texts.
SUMMARIZING
Many kids just want to retell what happened word for word. But if you encourage them to create a hand organizer with the 5 W questions. These notes will help them create a summary or gist statement. Writing is always more fun when the topic is something of interest.
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| Student Hand Organizer: using the 5 senses to describe an experience |
PLAYING CARDS & DICE
Having a strong number sense carries students into the more difficult mathematical concepts. Any hands on method can help strengthen these important foundations.
OPERATIONS
Just with 2 simple dice you can have the students practice any of the operations. Whatever two digits the students roll they can add, subtract, multiply, or divide them. This can be done with a partner or on their own with a record sheet for accountability.
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PLACE VALUE
Students can draw a number of cards to create multi-digit numbers. From there they can try and create the largest or smallest possible number from those cards. With a partner they can work on the concept of greater than or less than in a war type game. I have also had them work with the two numbers they created together to practice multi-digit addition and subtraction.
CIRCLES AND STARS
This is a great way to help introduce or practice the concept of multiplication. The first die rolled is the number of circles the students draw on their paper. The second roll with be the number of stars drawn in each circle. Once they count the number of total stars they will have the product created. The student then writes the number sentence that is represented in the picture.
These simple strategies are inexpensive and easily differentiated for the needs of your students. Placed in a center or used in a whole group setting, with a little "thinking outside the box", your students will be excited and engaged with minimal costs.