Tomorrow my students will be participating in what
our team calls “Mind Olympics.” The
“Mind Olympics” is a friendly competition against the homerooms on our
sixth grade team where they play mind games. Each homeroom teacher creates a challenging mind activity for the
students and they earn points for first through fifth place. We tally the points up at the end of the day
then announce the winner. The mind challenges
are:
24 Game – This is a math card game in which the
object is to find a way to manipulate four numbers so that the result is 24. Addition, subtraction, multiplication, or
division, and sometimes other procedures, may be used to make four numbers from
one to nine equal 24.
Word Plexers – These are word-based puzzles
that describe a word or phrase without actually spelling it out. For example, KCART would be backtrack since
it is the word track spelled backwards.
Paper Tower Challenge – The goal is for students to create
the tallest free standing tower with only one piece of paper and 20 centimeters of tape.
 |
| http://prod.zurb.s3.amazonaws.com/friday15/uploads/activity/artwork/25/papertower.jpg |
Sudoku – Is a
puzzle in which players insert the numbers one to nine into a grid be made up
of of nine squares subdivided into a further nine smaller squares in such a way
that every number appears once in each horizontal line, vertical line, and
square.
 |
| Sudoku example |
I am running the Sudoku challenge. I give them the easiest puzzle I can find and
never have a homeroom complete it within the 50 minutes. Sudoku is challenging but not many students
even know what Sudoku is before I explain it. In the years past, I have created a PowerPoint
that explains the rules. However, that
does not seem to be enough to help them understand it. I usually have one or
two students that have played it before and they help explain it to others. I had not thought of this before but this
year I will show a YouTube video explaining the directions. If I had more time, I would have created my
own VoiceThread explaining each step.
Students have a blast with these challenging mind
games. Hopefully my homeroom takes first
place this year!
This sounds like so much fun! One of my friends who is a middle school teacher was telling me about how difficult it is to find things to keep the middle schooler's excited about learning during the last week of the year. I shared this idea with her hoping that she could benefit from this idea!
ReplyDeleteI agree with Liz! My fifth graders were having a hard time staying engaged the last couple of days, so I can only imagine your 6th graders. I love how you found educational games and activities for them to play, and that you showed them a video to explain your expectations for Mind Olympics! It will be even more motivating for them when you will be the one giving the explanation using VoiceThread. Way to go, Love!
ReplyDelete