Brain breaks are a valuable tool to help reset students’ minds and keep them fresh. Taking a brain break is just like it sounds: taking a break from whatever the students are focusing on.
When I first learned about this when I was teaching summer school, I thought, “How come I haven’t hear of this sooner?” SKUNK is a quick and easy game for you to play with your students. It works great as a brain break or if you have a few minutes to spare before the end of class.
Skunk is a dice rolling game of chance. Supplies needs are a sheet of paper per student and 2 dice (die?) for the teacher. Students will set their paper up like this:
Students will all stand to participate in the round. There are 5 rounds, one for each letter. For a shorter game, use PIG or a longer game play GIRAFFE. It doesn’t matter the name but the number of letters indicate the number of rounds.
You as the teacher will then roll the dice. Whatever number you roll is how many points the students earn.
Say you roll a 6 and a 4. Students will earn 10 points. Then students will choose to either accept that amount and sit down, or play for another round. If in the proceeding rounds, a 1 is rolled, students who are standing lose all the points earned in the round. If snack eyes aka two 1’s are rolled, the standing players lose all the points earned for the ENTIRE GAME!
The way the round ends is either a 1 is rolled (with the exception of a 1 rolled the first turn) or all students opt out of the round. The game ends when the last round is over.
These are my own creation! The idea came from a candy activity where students are given a description of a candy bar and they have to come up with the name of it. But most of them on the activity were old ones that aren’t around anymore. So I had to think of something else. Hence, Guess that Slogan activities were born!
In these activities, students are given the slogan for a brand. Let’s use the example of cereal. In this Cereal Slogan activity, students are given 14 cereal slogans. They have to come up with what cereal goes with that slogan. Like “Be Happy, Be Healthy” is a slogan for Cheerios.
These activities also come with a word bank if you want to use that version instead. They also include a digital version to accommodate for a paperless classroom or online learning.
The current slogan activities include Cereal, Candy, Fast Food, Popular Brands, Cars, and Holiday Songs. Or you can buy them all in this bundle here! It includes free updates when I post more of these slogan activities!
At the end of the school year, students and teachers are typically burnt out. Doing non-content specific things can help alleviate some of that burn-out.
My students taught this to me and I am obsessed with it! It is way better and requires more strategy than regular Tic Tac Toe. You can find a beautiful explanation of how to play here! The rules can seem a bit complicated, but trust me, your students will love it!
To spice it up, I made a math version using Solving Equations. When students want to mark off a spot, they have to solve the equations first. It adds a slight academic value to the game.
Do you remember those blank multiplication charts we had to fill in back in elementary school? Bring those back by making it a challenge.
I hand out blank 10×10 multiplication charts upside down on students’ desks. Student are racing the clock to fill in the answers. You can up the challenge by making it addition or by not putting the numbers in order.
I make a leaderboard in my classroom that carries over to all of my classes. I do this because it is a fun way to incentivize students. PLUS, not only do students love the competition, it gets students more familiar with math facts which increases their math fluency.
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