Language Arts

Spelling Review

Are your students ready for a big-league game? Give this outdoor activity a try!

Set up: Program each of a supply of index cards with a different spelling word. Depending on the word's difficulty, also write on each card "single," "double," "triple," or "home run."

Activity: Divide students into two teams and head outside to the ball field. Instruct players from Team 1 to take a position on the field. Give the pitcher the cards. Instruct a player (batter) from Team 2 to come to the batter's box and have the pitcher call out the top word from the stack. Direct all students to spell the word silently while the batter spells it aloud. If the batter correctly spells the word, he runs the number of bases written on the card. If he misspells the word, the player earns an out for his team. After the batter's turn, the pitcher moves the card to the bottom of the stack and calls out the next word to the next player. When a team has three outs, direct the teams to change places. The team that scores more runs wins.

Tip: Have students rotate positions while playing defense so everyone gets a chance to be the pitcher.

Math: 2.NBT.A.3

standard and expanded form of numbers

Visualizing numbers in standard and expanded form is as easy as 1, 2, 3! In advance, cut a supply of sentence strips in half, making enough for each child to have two. Place the sentence strips and a die at a center. A child rolls the die and writes the number as the hundreds digit at the far left end of a sentence strip as shown. He repeats the process, writing the second number as the tens digit in the middle and the last number as the ones digit at the far right. Next, he fills in the value for each digit and adds plus signs where needed. He folds the first and last digits back and then creases the folded ends of the strip toward the tens digit. He reads the number with the strip closed and then opens the strip to reveal the number in expanded form. He repeats the process to show a new number with expanded and standard form.

Print-and-Use Cards

Reasons and Results

For this partner activity, cut apart a copy of the cards and place them in a resealable plastic bag. Also program an index card with “because (the reason or cause)” on one side and “so (the result or effect)” on the other. To begin, students place the index card on the work surface. They match two cards that, when combined with the word on the index card, make a cause-and-effect sentence. Next, the students write the sentence on a sheet of paper (adding capital letters and punctuation as needed) and underline the cause. Then the pair flips over the index card, rearranges the two smaller cards to make a new sentence, and writes it on the paper. Students repeat the process with the remaining cards, making and writing ten sentences in all.