Last Week Writing Activity / Game

This is something I did with my kids last week. It’s pretty quick and simple, I did it with 4th through 7th grades (with some variations, below).

First, say a couple sentences about what you are doing in the summer. “I am going to America” is a good starter. All the kids will copy with “I am going to Balaton, I am going to Italy, etc.” On the board, write three or four example sentences like:

In the summer, I will go to America.
In the summer, I will swim in the Tisza.
In the summer, I will visit my grandparents in Törökszentmihály.
or, for the younger kids who don;t know future yet:
In the summer, I am going to America.
In the summer, I am eating ice cream.
In the summer, I am playing with my dog.

Have each student write 8 or 10 or 15 sentences about their own summer plans (if you want to use Variation 3, below, it’s important that they write on loose paper, not in their notebooks). When everyone is finished, go around the room and have each student read one sentence. The other students have to listen and if they wrote the same sentence, they can a check next to it. The first person to have 6 or 8 or however many checks is the winner. It’s fun because they will argue with you about if “I visit my grandmother” and “I visit my cousin” are the same or not.

Generally, this activity has taken between 35 and 45 minutes.

Variation 1 - with younger students, you can have them write only 5 or 6 sentences, and also draw pictures to go with them. When I did this, I never got to the game part because they drew for the whole hour.

Variation 2 - with one class, I had them draw a board with 16 squares, 4 by 4, and write a sentence in each square. Then as the students read off their sentences, we played bingo with the boards.

Variation 3 - my best idea yet. At the end of each class, I collected all the papers. If I can manage to not lose them between now and next year - presto, instant lesson. The plan is to hand them back in September and have a lesson like “So what did you actually do this summer?” Hopefully, it’ll be interesting for the kids to read something they wrote months ago.
Even those of you who are going home or switching schools could still do this and leave the papers as a gift for the new teacher. It would be nice because in addition to a free lesson, he/she would also get an idea of their writing abilities.

Good luck, everyone. Have a great last week!