May 13, 2010
Get your pupils’ creative juices flowing with this diverse literacy game.
It builds speaking and listening skills, while incorporating physical activity - cross curricular indeed!
1. With the children in the circle, have a ball.
2. Begin a story.
3. Throw the ball to a person in the circle, who must continue the story. They then throw the ball to the next person, and so on.
You can decide if the children must add just a word or a whole sentence to the story.
For a more structured version, use ‘Fortunately, unfortunately’, for example:
Unfortunately the plane’s engines failed.
Fortunately the pilot had a parachute.
Unfortunately the parachute would not open.
Fortunately there was a haystack underneath.
And so on!
For further detailed ideas, book a Freshwater Drama or MFL INSET training session for your school and you will be given a toolbox of ideas to develop drama learning techniques in all areas of the curriculum.
Categories: Drama Activities
Posted by: Ellen @ 5:31 pm
April 19, 2010
Revive your class’ concentration with this energetic game.
Zip Zap Boing is lively, fun and adaptable – and guaranteed to refresh the children’s focus in those afternoon lulls. You can try it out in different languages too.
1. Get the children to stand in a circle
2. Each word – ‘zip’, ‘zap’ or ‘boing’ – is called out in conjunction with an action:
Zip – swinging the arms to the left or right and pointing in that direction to pass the ‘ball of energy’ to the next person in the circle (depending on which way the ‘current’ is being sent around the circle).
Zap – bringing the hands together and pointing the index fingers at a person who is not directly next to you – sending the ball of energy to them. They then zip the current to the next person in the circle.
Boing – facing the person who has passed the ball of energy to you, lifting up both hands to head height and wobbling around like jelly. This reverses the current back the opposite way.
3. Send the ball of energy off around the circle – “Zip”! The children then pass the current to the next person in the circle by zipping, or they might decide to zap it across the circle, or boing it back the other way. However, you can’t return a zap with a zap, or return a zap with a boing!
4. The aim is to get the current going as quickly as possible, so concentration is vital. If you say the wrong word with the action, you’re out!
The words can easily be interchanged to fit with the topic of the class, or even changed into a modern foreign language. Perhaps ‘zip, zap, boing’ become ‘bleu, rouge, vert’, or ‘eins, zwei, drei’? Linking words with actions has proven to be a very effective way of learning MFL.
For further detailed ideas, book a Freshwater Drama or MFL INSET training session for your school and you will be given a toolbox of ideas to develop drama learning techniques in all areas of the curriculum.
Categories: Drama Activities
Posted by: Freshwater Theatre Company @ 11:41 am
March 5, 2010
It’s an oldie but a goodie! Fruit Bowl is one of most simple and fun games that you can apply to almost any area of the curriculum.
Let’s use fruit as our example topic but you can use this game for any area of your curriculum:
1. Create a large circle of chairs with enough for all but one of your students to sit in.
2. Decide what items you will use for the game - let’s say everyone is endowed with one of the following: peach, apple, pear or plum. Therefore, in a group of 28 there will be 7 of each in the circle but it doesn’t matter if there are uneven numbers of items.
3. The person in the middle calls out a type of fruit - “peaches!” - and everyone who is a peach must move from their seat and try and sit in another seat. Of course there will always be one person left standing. Participants must move to a chair that is not their own or the chair beside them. This can get quite animated so keep an eye out for over zealous or risky behaviour.
4. The person in the middle may also call “fruit bowl!” at any time, which means that everyone must find a new seat.
You can mix this one up quite easily - endow everyone with foods of differing nutritional value (chips, apples, pies and spinach perhaps) so you can add “healthy foods!” and “unhealthy foods” to the possibilities.
Other ideas for subjects:
Literacy - Give everyone characters from a story such as Little Red Riding Hood such as Red, Wolf, Grandma and the Woodcutter. You can introduce physical actions that signify each character which can eventually replace the words so the game becomes more about non-verbal communication.
Numeracy - Give everyone numbers such as 2, 3, 4 and 7. You can call extra categories such as “evens”, “odds”, “primes” and “square roots”.
This is just the tip of the iceberg!
For further detailed ideas, book a Freshwater Drama or MFL INSET training session for your school and you will be given a toolbox of ideas to develop drama learning techniques in all areas of the curriculum.
Categories: Drama Activities
Posted by: Freshwater Theatre Company @ 5:45 pm
