If you have students who tend to disrupt class or have trouble focusing, you may want to choose them to pick first. They’re more likely to get involved in the game if they feel like they’re your “helpers”. You can also have the students at the desk put their outstretched closed fist on the table without their thumb up. The important thing is that their hands are easily accessible to the pickers.
Children can only be picked once in a round. If the students have their thumbs down to begin with, they will put their thumb up when they are picked. Make sure the pickers are silent as they move around the room. They don’t want the student that they pick to recognize their voice.
Trying to decide who picked them is good for a student’s reasoning skills. They can analyze all the pickers to see which one looks “guilty. ” Students may at first think they were picked by their friends but be surprised that someone else has picked them.
Make sure the child who is “it” does not talk after you have chosen them. You don’t want them to give away their identity to the rest of the class. You can encourage the kids to behave by saying things like, “I’m only going to choose a student who is being quiet and following all the rules. ”
Suspense will build as students are ruled out from being “it” by process of elimination. Be ready to calm your students down if they get overexcited. You can make the game more fun for the kids by giving a prize to the child that guesses correctly. Let the winner choose one item from a bag filled with assorted candy or small items like pencils and erasers.
You can also use the game as a reward for good behavior. Say things like, “If everyone is good today, we’ll play heads up, seven up for the last thirty minutes of class. ”
Be sure to use words that are appropriate for your students level of education. Make sure to use the same word until one of the students gets it right so all the other students can hear it spelled correctly. You can write the word on the board or projector after the students have spelled it to give your students a chance to review. You can also have all the students spell the word in unison after it is used.
You can even have your students write their guesses on the board to work on their written grammar. Writing down their guesses can help your students learn how to write in complete sentences, when to use a question mark, and how to capitalize words.
Use questions with the appropriate difficulty level. You don’t want your kids to be bored with a bunch of easy questions, but you also don’t want them to be discouraged by questions that are too difficult. Repeat the rule that corresponds to each question after it is used. For example: For the question, “What is nine times five?” the answer would be forty-five. Say, “Remember that whenever a number is multiplied by five, the answer ends in five or zero. ”
The game might run smoother if you write your questions on pieces of paper and place them in a hat. Let your students choose a question from the hat to answer when they are picked.
