Evening the playing field

[GrannyGrump]

Sometimes the brightest, fastest kids monopolize the games, getting all the points and therefore always winning. But I came up with a way to level the playing field.

I scanned the coins of my home country (USA) front and back, and printed them out, about 50 pennies, 25 nickels, ten dimes and two quarters. I cut them out and pasted them together front and back, then laminated them and cut them out. (Yes, it's a lot of work! But I think it's worth it.)

I put the "coins" in a little bag that is now my "coin bag." Instead of giving the kids points, I give them coins. At the end of the game, the child with the highest value of coins is the winner.

This is great because they learn the currency -- and older students learn about the coins, like the names of the Presidents that are on them. And slower kids can sometimes get quarters and dimes and end up beating the faster kids who got just pennies and nickles. The kids are quickly hooked on them and demand "coin games."

Here are a few of my favorite "coin games":

Running Game: (This is a modification of a game that used to reward only speed, so I kept the original game but changed the rules.) Students form two teams and line up on opposite sides of the room. There's a marker for each team on the front table. I have a pack of flash cards. I hold up a flash card, and the first student in line has to run up and write on the board. (This game is great because you can change the level of difficulty very easily. For beginners, you might hold up an upper case letter and the student has to write the lower-case letter, or you call out a number and they have to write it. You progress through the student having to write the word to having to write a sentence such as "It is a table." or "The monster is in the bath tub.") I sing the Jeopardy music for the time. (The kids really love this! Once through the Jeopardy music for a quick task, twice through for a longer task.) The student gets a coin for his team if he gets the correct answer, and as the game gets more complex you can give bonus coins for things like correct spelling, best penmanship, flawless grammar, proper capitalization, proper punctuation, etc. This REALLY gets them to pay attention to capitalization and punctuation, since in my games that's worth two coins even if they get everything else wrong!) At the end of the game the team with the highest value of coins wins.

Hangman: I tend to use entire sentences for Hangman, often using an idiom or tongue twister. For each letter that is in the puzzle, the student gets a coin.

Crazy Mutating Sentences: I start out with a normal sentence from the target sentences for the lesson. Maybe, "The grandmother is in the kitchen cooking dinner." I'll start the game by changing one word: "The monkey is in the kitchen cooking dinner." Then the kids take turns changing one word. They can be as silly as they like, but the sentence must have proper grammar and spelling: "The monkey is in the toilet cooking dinner" is okay. "The monkey is in the toylit cooking dinner" or "The monkey is in the kitchen eat dinner" isn't. If the student makes an acceptable change, she gets a coin. If not, I change the sentence back to the most recent correct sentence. Kids LOVE this game. WARNING: You must establish a rule right away that no students' names can be used! Students can put "Gandalf is in the toilet cooking dinner" or "President Bush is in the toilet cooking dinner" but they can't have "Jin Hee is in the toilet cooking dinner" or it gets ugly quickly.

Spelling Game: Students line up as if for a spelling bee. For correctly spelling a word the student gets a coin. Students remain in the game regardless of whether or not they spell the word correctly.

Pronouncing Game: Similar to Spelling Game, except the teacher holds up a flash card with a word on it. If the student pronounces it correctly, he gets a coin. (This is great for r/l, p/b, a/o and other pairs of sounds that students struggle with.)

Really, just about any game with points can be converted into a Coin Game.

ALTERNATIVE USE: You can also use the "coin bag" for rewarding good behavior. This is good for unruly classes. If only one kid is behaving properly, I'll give him a coin and say, "Nice quiet work, Chon Ho!" The other kids quiet down quickly. After about a minute I'll be giving most of the kids each a coin for "Nice, quiet work!" By five minutes every kid is getting a coin for nice, quiet work. I just have to remember to stop the lesson about five minutes early to count up the coin values and reward the winning kid with a sticker or something.

[Brian]

Some great ideas there - thanks.

It must have taken you ages to cut out and laminate (and cut out again) all of those coins!!

A slightly quicker alternative I used once, was postage stamps. I'm from the UK. I asked my father to send me 5 pounds worth of postage stamps in small(ish) denominations.

You don't need to cut them out at first (just tear along the lines) and when you've lamenated them, they're a bit quicker to cut, because they have straight edges.

Brian

[GrannyGrump]

I kept the sheets on my desk and just cut out coins at odd moments.

When I laminated them I was very careful to cut them all out the same size, with huge borders around the dimes and very little around the quarters, so that there was no chance of feeling the size of the "coin" when pulling one from the bag.

Like I said, they were a pain in the butt to make but very much worth it.