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Showing posts with label sponge activity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sponge activity. Show all posts

Saturday, August 6, 2022

TRY TRIADS for Critical Thinking


All of my TRIADS products have just been refreshed.  Every set of these critical thinking, word relationships building, task cards is available for digital learning on TPT Easel.  And, even better, the price of each product has been reduced!

If TRIADS are new to you, you are in for a treat.  Your 3rd - 6th grade learners will love the challenge of finding the common word for each TRIAD.


Currently, there are 11 TRIADS units available in my store, as well as 3 bundles. 


Try them before you buy them with this FREEBIE!


TRIADS units have 20 task cards each.  They are provided in color (minimally to save your printing costs), but will print well if you change your printer settings to grayscale.  

If you opt for grayscale printing, I recommend that you print the cards on colorful cardstock.  It will add pizzazz to your task cards.
 This bundle contains the above three products at 20% savings.

Triads are great for center work. I include a critical thinking center in my daily rotations. They exercise the upper 3 levels of Bloom's Taxonomy: analysis, synthesis, and creation.                 

TRIADS are also perfect for an anchor activity or a fast finisher's challenge.

Carry several TRIADS task cards with you when you travel to special classes.  If there is a delay before students can enter, use TRIADS for a sponge activity.

The above 3 sets are available in this money saving bundle.


As a GATE teacher, I created these to challenge my students' thinking.  It was a delightful surprise when my learners begged to do more of them! 
TRIADS were so popular with my classes that I kept making more until I had 180 in total.
 

It was an absolute delight when students began creating their own to challenge each other and me! 


These 3 sets are available in this 
economical bundle.
This set of TRIADS was created to add to my Feet, Socks, & Shoes line of products. It, too, is available in print and digitally on TPT Easel.

What teachers are saying about TRIADS:



You'll love them!



Wednesday, January 29, 2014

Valentine's Day Hink Pink FREEBIE

Ever since I attended my 1st state conference for Gifted and Talented Education early in my career, I have seen, heard and read about Hink Pinks.  These vocabulary building, problem solving, critical thinking riddles are staples in GATE.  Perhaps my connection with Hink Pinks, et al, is best explained by the fact that my students absolutely love them!  They loved them when I was in the classroom and when I became an enrichment resource teacher, my pull-out students literally begged for more of them.

If you are new to the land of Hink Pinks, here's how they work:
  • Hink Pinks are riddles wherein the clues lead you to a 2 word answer.  Each answer word must have just 1 syllable and the 2 answer words must rhyme.
  • Hinky Pinkies are riddles seeking answers with 2 syllables in each word.  The 2 words must rhyme.
  • Hinkity Pinkities are rhyming answer word pairs with 3 syllables each.
Some teachers like to distribute Hink Pink clues on a work sheet, but I continually strive to eliminate worksheets from my teaching. About 20 years ago, I started putting the clues on 1/4 sheet cards. By doing so, I was able to create a resource that was ready to use year after year, saving me bunches of time and conserving paper big time!  

Armed with my Hink Pink, et al cards, I was able to use them as an anchor activity when students were arriving each morning. They also work well as a sponge activity and are great at a literacy center.  Now, working as a pull-out enrichment specialist, I use these cards as a warm-up activity. Without a doubt, G/T students are enthralled with these riddles.  But, I also found that "average" students were intrigued and set their caps to solve them. 

It's about time, teachers, to offer you my FREE set of Valentine's Day Hink Pinks, Hinky Pinkies, and Hinkity Pinkities.  Here's a preview:





The answer to this Hink Pink is smart heart.




The answer to this Hinky Pinky is sandy candy.  
The answer to the Hinkity Pinkity below is valentine turpentine.




There are 24 cards in this FREE set.  Naturally, there is an answer key.  Did I mention that it is FREE?  You can retrieve your copy here.

I hope you enjoy Hink Pinks, et al as much as my students and I do.



If you like this product, you may like these, as well:





I'd love it if you would follow:           

Saturday, August 31, 2013

Back to School Time Savers -- Sponge Activities

No matter how carefully you plan your teaching day, there will inevitably be an awkward minute or two that needs filling.  It could be when you are waiting outside the music room for your "special," having arrived early because your class made it through the halls without having to stop for traffic or behavior control.  Maybe you find yourself with a few idle moments while waiting for all the classes to file into the auditorium for an assembly. Perhaps you lined up for lunch 2 minutes early.  For whatever reason and whenever it happens, do you have a plan for filling those moments?

Maximize those intervals with "sponge activities." You know, something that absorbs the time while doing what you have dedicated your life to -- exercising young brains.   

If you have been working on rhyming words, ask individuals to name a word that rhymes with ----. Give your class extra practice with counting and cardinality (per the CCSS) by asking them to count on or count backwards from an arbitrary number.  Reinforce whichever operation you are studying in math by tossing out some equations.  

Reinforcing concepts and facts is wonderful and worthwhile. But have you considered trying brain exercises?  


If you teach young children, a popular sponge activity is to clap and/or snap a pattern for your students to copy. Coincidentally, your charges have to be careful listeners to replicate your pattern. That's always a desirable goal.  

20 Questions and I Spy work well, especially if you are not in your classroom.  In our never ending pursuit of sight word recognition, you could institute "Spotlight Words."  To do this, turn out the lights, hand a large flashlight to one child, and ask him to shine the spotlight on a specific word wall word.  

If he spotlights the correct word, then he hands the flashlight to another student and directs her to find a different word wall word.  Play can continue as long as you wish.  This is my flashlight of choice.

Another sponge activity involves categories.  This can be related to content area subjects. For example, ask your students to name animals native to a rain forest, a desert, etc.  Other category ideas are foods you can eat raw, foods that start with "k," clothes you should NOT wear this time of year, a noun that names a place, verbs that describe what you are doing in P.E., a word with a suffix, an adjective, a 2 syllable word, a compound word, a country that starts with B, etc.  The longer you work with categories, the more fluent you become in flinging them at your students.  Simultaneously, your students will become more fluent in their thinking.

If you are a neophyte or simply trying to brush away the cobwebs from the summer, you may want to have some teaching aids handy.  My favorites and, more importantly, my students' favorites, are Hink Pinks, et al. and Triads.  Both of these word play activities can be made on cards that are handy to grab and/or carry in a pocket.  [BTW, I'm a big proponent of teacher tool belts for this.]  
Teacher tool belt

Imagine just pulling a card from your tool belt and instantly engaging your students' critical thinking.  
These are samples of Hink Pinks, Hinky Pinkies, and Hinkity Pinkities.  Currently, there are 23 Hink Pink products in my TPT Store that are ready to print and cut apart.  Place a stack in your tool belt and you are well armed for any fallow moment.  If you are not familiar with Hink Pinks, you can read about them here.

These are Triads cards.
Again, they are print ready to make life easier for you.  There are 8 triads units in my TPT Store.  If you are not familiar with Triads, read about them here.  Either of these activities will cause the cogs to start turning in your kiddos' brains and that should be your goal every day.
   

What are your favorite sponge activities?  Please leave some comments and/or links below.













Until next time...







Monday, June 10, 2013

What the Teacher Said

Having been a teacher for more than 30 years, I've said a lot.  But that's not what this post is about.  This post is about what teachers have said about my products.

My teaching passions are many, but chief among them are materials that promote critical thinking and problem solving.  My appetite for this was first whetted wwwaaaaayyyyy back in my second year of teaching when I attended a state conference on gifted education.  It was there that I was first introduced to the  critical thinking activity, Hink Pinks, and their cousins, Hinky Pinkies and Hinkity Pinkities.  


 My enthusiasm for Hink Pinks et al. has never waned.  Indeed, I have used them with every class from 1st grade to 5th. It takes a little more prompting to get 1st graders to combine syllable constraints with synonyms, but there is nothing more rewarding than seeing that "lightbulb moment" when a little one gets it.


You can see examples of my Hink Pinks et al. by going here.  Several of them are free! If you try them, I think you will like them. But, you don't have to take my word for it.  Here's what the teachers said:



If you would like to check out my Hink Pink et al. products, click here.  By the way, they are CCSS aligned.

Thursday, November 1, 2012

Election Vocabulary

It's about time, teachers,  to work with election vocabulary.  


I love to sneak learning in with fun activities.  To that end, I cast my ballot for Election Hink Pinks, Hinky Pinkies, Hinkity Pinkities, and Hitinkity Pitinkities. With just a few days left until the national election, you have undoubtedly introduced vocabulary associated with it.  So now, you need to add the fun.  

If you are unfamiliar with Hink Pinks, they are riddles for which the answer must be a pair of rhyming words; each word having just 1 syllable (as do hink and pink).  Hinky Pinkies are riddles with rhyming word pair answers; each answer word having 2 syllables.  You guessed it, Hinkity Pinkities have 3 syllables and Hitinkity Pitinkities have 4 syllables.

Try these examples:

 



Skills involved in solving these riddles include: 
  • vocabulary development
  • parts of speech
  • synonyms
  • rimes
  • Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS)

This product includes 24 cards with election themed clues and, of course, an answer key. The cards are copy ready; just print them on card stock (pink, of course), laminate, and cut them apart.  Now you are ready to place them at a center, use them as an anchor activity, grab a few for a sponge activity, and/or use them for whole group problem solving.  If your students have never tried Hink Pinks, et al, solve several together, modeling your thinking.

Were you able to solve the above examples? As you can testify, they are not quick and easy.  I recommend them for upper elementary and middle school.

And the answers are...
  • vote tote
  • tally rally
  • President's residence
  • politician opposition
Grab your copy of Election Hink Pinks, Hinky Pinkies, Hinkity Pinkities, & Hitinkity Pitinkities here.  They are only $2.50.


Remember to



  

Friday, July 13, 2012

HOTS Activity

Did you find yesterday's TRIADS easy?  If you did, thank the teachers that encouraged you to use HOTS.  

Answer:  card


Answer:  brush

Weren't those fun?  Want to try some more?  



WARNING: TRIADS may be addicting!






If you like TRIADS, you might also enjoy: