Most used games I’ve been doing:
Pizza of Death: Preparation: You need a sticky ball. Draw a huge circle on the board. Cut it into slices like a pizza, one for each student and one extra for you. Change the center (where the lines converge) into a circle (like a bullseye) and write “Pizza of Death” there. Write your name in the smallest slice. Hopefully have this all arranged in less than 2 minutes, or do it before class on the board and let the kids wonder what’s going on as they walk in.
Rules to explain: “This is a pizza of death. There are many slices here, one for each person. When you answer a question, you get to throw the ball at the pizza like this.” (Toss the ball at the pizza and let it thwack satisfyingly. Let students marvel) “Whoever you hit is DEAD! The slices to the left and right of that person then Paper Rock Scissors. Whoever wins just KILLED that person and takes over his slice. The last person remaining is the winner, and has KILLED the entire classroom. Now, when I say go, I want you to stand up and write your name in a slice of pizza. Go!”
Play-by-play: After they have all signed their name (I used this game for classes ranging from 10-45, but it really only works up to about 20), ask a few easy questions. “Okay, question one… Raise your hand to answer… What is my name?” The first student who raises his hand and answers gets to throw the ball. Whoever he hits, erase that name, saying proudly, “Okay, Anthony is DEAD. Now, Sandy and Winnie, Paper Rock Scissors. Okay, Sandy, you won.” Erase the border of Sandy and Anthony’s slice so now Sandy’s slice is two slices. “Okay, question two, how do you spell my name?” Let them jump up now, eager to play.
Eventually, or maybe immediately, one of them will ask what the bullseye at the center is, or maybe they will just hit it by luck. “If you hit the pizza of death words, then you get a new slice. I will take the largest slice, cut it in half, and write your name in. So even if you die, you can come back into the game.”
This is a good game for any task; from reading a new story to answering grammar questions to just a time waster. Eventually, students realize a few things; it’s not actually good to be a bigger slice, if you want to win. Toss out easy questions with the hard ones to let all students have the opportunity to throw the ball. If a student hits a line, he can kill two people, maybe even three. Other variations are not having students write in their name, but instead writing in other things and having students represent them. (For my class of 40 I did this with teachers names in the pizza slices, and some students almost cried when their homeroom teacher got killed, although the boy who did the killing was very happy).
Popcorn: No preparation needed: “Okay, here’s how popcorn works. Everyone will be standing. You will read a sentence, one sentence. Then you will say Popcorn Tina. Then you sit down. Tina reads a sentence and says Popcorn Jerry. Tina sits down. You can only Popcorn people who are standing. Okay, everyone stand up.”
Very simple task, it gets all the kids eager to read (to sit down of course). This is a good way to also listen to individuals speak who are timid, and to also correct the harder vocabulary words. I’ll find that even a very poor reader will be happy to attempt the harder sentences just to sit down. They also have to keep track of where they are, because if they are popcorned and don’t know where they are, they have to remain standing. I usually do two rounds of this… the last person to be standing finishes his/her sentence, and I say, “okay, everyone stand up.” I have him/her popcorn someone and he/she is very happy to be the first one to sit.
One Minute Write: This is a series you can do repeatedly throughout the year. Give each student a half sheet of paper or open their book to a new page and draw a line cutting it in half. Have them get pencils ready. “Okay, lift up your pencils. Now, today we are going to do one minute writes. You are going to write AS MANY words as you can think of that are of the type that I say. So, if I say colors, you can write Blue…” (Write on the board), “or green…or black… or…” and wait for a student to say one and write it down. Then whirl around: “But don’t write down anything! Because it won’t be colors. No. Today you are going to write verbs. What is a verb?” Give two or three examples, write them on the board. “Okay… so, when I say go, you will have one minute. Are you ready? Starting in five seconds…GO!” Walk around the room as some scribble, others stare confusedly around, and throw out some help. “Walk is a verb… you could write see…” Give them one minute to write, then say, “okay, pencils UP! Now, stand up. Sit down if you have 1 or less word… 2 or less… 3 or less…” and go up till you have 3 or so kids standing.
Usually I do a round two and pick a much easier topic so that they then have a feeling of success the second time.
Verbs is just an example, you can make it more difficult, and it is pretty variable. You could say, “Tell me as much as you can about your father.” or just whatever… Of course, then the quickwrite isn’t about how many words you wrote, but just something you can collect and maybe read to learn more about the students.
I think this kind of activity could be modified to different situations, such as buying a car or computer, or planning a vacation with different stops and modes of travel.