One of the traditions he has begun at our school is a Reading Challenge each "season." We hold one in the Fall, Winter, and Spring.
This year, the Fall challenge incentive was plasma scooter races. The students who met their goals raced around the gym. Each class had a winner that was able to race all the other classroom winners. The winner of that race was able to race the principal. Oh, how much fun!
The Winter challenge incentive was a regatta at our local YMCA. The primary students who met their goals made boats out of milk cartons. They put all their boats in front of the water slide. When someone turned the water on, the rushing water (and waves created by the high school swim team) allowed the boats to race across the pool. The intermediate students were placed into teams and built boats out of cardboard boxes that two team members could ride in. Fun was had by all!
I was one of the teachers left behind to work with the non-goal-meeters, so for my portion of the afternoon events, I had the second graders rotating through fact fluency Math stations.
In this station, the students worked on an iPad fluency app called ArithmeTick. I like it because the kids can work on both addition and subtraction and they can choose the difficulty level.
Then, the kids visited this Math game. On Pinterest, I saw a similar one, but I realized that it was a game that you could purchase through some company, so I quickly made up my own version. It's a grid with numbers randomly placed. Then, I made the tiles, addition and subtraction problems. Kids take turns drawing a problem from their color pile. They lay the tile on their problem's answer. The goal is to get 5 of your tiles in a line, kind of like BINGO. The kids really seemed to enjoy it, perhaps because you can try to block your partner from winning, so there can be strategy involved. Click here to visit my store and download it. It's free.
The next rotation was an ABCya.com Math game called Math Match. On this game the kids have choices again. They can choose addition or subtraction. They can choose to play Memory or Matching. They can also choose the difficulty level.
The final rotation was this other game I found on Pinterest. The students each start with the number 99. They take turns rolling the dice, adding the numbers on the dice, and subtracting that number. For example, maybe Sally rolled a 6, so 99-6=93. Then, on Sally's next turn she rolls a 10. 93-10=83. The kids keep playing until one of them reaches 0. That kid is the winner! If you were really wanting them to work on addition, you could do the opposite and start at 0, trying to reach 100.
Even though these kiddos didn't get to go to the YMCA and watch the boats or play in the water, I don't think they spent their afternoon in a pity party because they seemed to be engaged during the time I had them for these Math rotations.
I hope you saw something that could be useful to you. I know fact fluency is a big deal in our school.
