Hand up, Stand up, Pair up- The fun way to teach vocabulary

Hand up, Stand up , Pair up is one of my most favorite activities to do in the classroom!  You can do this game with ANY skill!  We play with math facts, vocabulary, grammar, and spelling words!  The best part is it is totally FREE, EASY to prep, QUICK activity, and EVERYONE is engaged!

Before playing you (the teacher) need to prep enough cars for everyone. For example, in the video below, we played hand up, stand up, pair up with our social studies vocabulary words.  We had 7 different words.  I made enough cards for everyone to have a vocabulary word.  The card needs to have the question and the answer.  YES, it is okay if there are multiple.  Because I only had 7 different vocabulary words and 22 students there were about 3 of each word. 

Once you have the cards prepped, sometimes I even write them on post its or notecards, you can do two options.  One begin playing.  Two make up gestures or non-verbal signals as #Miss5th calls it. 

With our vocabulary words we come up with different gestures to help us remember the words.  While we are playing the game they are to do the gestures as well.  

Rules to the game: 

Give everyone a card. (the card as the problem and the answer or the vocabulary word and the definition.  Everyone finds a person.  Partner A says the word that partner A is holding (or the problem.) Player B says the definition to the word partner A is holding(or the answer) with the gesture.  If partner B is correct, Partner A says good job.  If partner B is incorrect, Partner A politely says try again here is the gesture.  

If partner B gets it correct, It is partner B's turn to give partner A the word in their hand.  Partner A then answers.  If partner A is correct they two partners high five, switch cards, and put their hand up.  If partner A is incorrect partner B politely says try again and gives them the gesture.  

If partner A is correct they high five, switch cards, and put their hands up.  Now both partners are looking for other friends with their hands up to repeat the process. Because they switch cards they are able to go to any friend who has their hand up.  Even if they have already been to that person.  They switched cards so the cards are never the same.  

This game is GREAT because the kids love it and EVERY single person is engaged.  The game only takes abut 10 minutes and they get to about every vocabulary word several times!  

Here is a video of how we do it in our class.  

Leave a Comment differentiation, grammer, math, vocabulary

Hands on Math Linky

I absolutely love teaching math!  This is a great time to get the kids learning, engaged, and excited about their education!  Math is a perfect way to bring in some great hands on materials and still be learning the content. 

This week we have been learning about area and perimeter.  Look what we did!  

To introduce the different between area and perimeter, I started by making shapes around the room with duck tape.  (The shapes are on the ground.) A few kids got to each shape.  I would say everyone stand on the duck tape.  I told them to walk around the tape.  As they were all walking around their shapes I explained they were walking around the perimeter of the shape. 

 Then I told them to stand in the middle of the shape and to walk up and down boxes inside the shape.  I told them you are in the area of the shape.  

We did this a few times.  I had them regroup back at the carpet and go to a new shape where we did it again.  We did this about three times.  Then once we got back to the carpet I had them turn and talk to their partner about the difference between area and perimeter.  

To complete the lesson, we did do a worksheet for a quick assessment.  In the worksheet they highlighted the perimeter of each shape blue and colored in the area red.  You can get this freebieee here!  

  

The next day we used the shapes to find the perimeter and the area!  Much more fun on the floor!!We used a recording sheet to record our answers! You can get the recording sheet here! We did ours in the hallway! :)

The next day we found our own shapes!  We got with partners.  Each pair of students had two dice, one piece of graphing paper, and two different colored pencils. Each player choose a color to use and wrote their names with their color on the top of the paper. (This way I knew who was who.) Player one would roll both die.  This gave us the two sides of the rectangle.  The player that rolled the die would draw the rectangle with their color on the graph paper using the numbers he rolled. For example if he rolled a 4 and a 2 he would draw a shape with 2 squares going down 4 going across to make the area 8 square units and the perimeter 12 units.  Inside the shape the would write the area.  Next to the shape the wrote the perimeter. They loved making their own problems!  

Every kid loves post it notes!  We Found the area and perimeter with unit blocks!  I wrote the area and perimeter of a shape on the board.  Each student had several unit blocks.  They made the area and perimeter out of the unit blocks.  You could also use post-its, squares of paper, or cheese its! 

We went back in the hallway and learned how to use the distributive property to find the area of a shape. I added an odd shape to our original shapes.  They had to come up with two multiplication sentences to each shape.  Then they were add the answers to get the area.  Then find the perimeter. Get the freebies here!

We also used differentiated task cards throughout this unit!  We used the task cards to play scoot as well as extra time fillers.  The cards have area and perimeter problems as well as word problems!  Each card comes with a QR code for immediate feedback! You can find these task cards here! 

Check out these other posts about doing math without a worksheet at Mrs. Wills Kindergarten. How do you do area and perimeter? 

1 comment Linky Party, math