Blog Revival or Snowballs in Fall

Not in the spiritual sense, but wow, has it been almost a year since my last blog post?  Am I really THAT bad of a blogger?  No more my friends.  I am now committed to give back some of the ideas that I take away from the many blogs I visit each week.

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Starting with one of my favorite 5th grade review lessons :   Snowballs in Fall

Let me start by noting this is not an original idea, I read about the review concept on a blog somewhere and then just adapted the lesson.

Prep: I take my Genre Word Wall words and their definitions and put them on 8.5x5.5" paper in a large enough font to be easily read.  Crumble them into snowballs and place into a container to make it easy to carry.  Collect my whistle.  Done.

Rules: You may not hit anyone above the shoulders, although the snowball is only paper, it can still hurt if caught in the eye. (I've never had this happen yet) You may not hoard snowballs, only one snowball at a time.  When the whistle blows, stop.

Review: Each student should have one-two snowballs depending on class size and the number of snowballs created. They should carefully open them to avoid ripping the paper. The now locate their partner.  Once all partners have been located, students read off their genre and definition to the class before returning to their seat.

Depending on how quickly they accomplish this task I have a second set of snowballs ready to go with my regular Library Word Wall words (title, author, spine, character, etc).  The kids love the lesson and it's a great kick-off to the school year.

Does this accomplish a Common Core task, no.  But without the information gained from observing my students remember, problem solve, and interact with other I can't move onto the greater lessons that do.