Lately, to mix things up, I’ve been making a lot of my classroom activities more game like by using playing cards. “Ace to King Review” is something I’ve been using for vocabulary review. The idea is basic, and students pick up on the game quickly. All you need is a projector, playing cards, and a key for your students to check each other’s verbal responses. I’ve used parts of speech vocabulary words for fourth grade, but you can use any vocabulary words you want.
Rules (also listed on the slide show below): Students work in pairs. Give them a partial deck of cards (Hand out the same number to everyone, but don’t worry if everyone has different face values. If you play this a few times, eventually, every student will be asked for every definition at least once.) Partner 1 draws a card, which corresponds to a word projected on the board. They attempt to define the word, and Partner 2 agrees, disagrees, or checks the printed answer key (found after the question slide). Partner 1 gets to keep all the cards that they answered correctly, and gives back the wrong answers to try again. There is no question for the “Joker” card, so students can choose any word they want when they draw this card!
The Google Docs slide show is below, and you can download it using the little gear icon below the presentation box. Feel free to try it out, adapt it, and let me know how it goes!
(I notice that the above frame seems to cut off the bottom of some slides–don’t worry, the downloaded version works fine!)
Related articles
- Sentence Frame Freebies (ichooseexcellence.wordpress.com)
Active Student Learning 