Lately, we teachers have been bombarded with educational terminology such as “The State Standards,” “Learning Assessments,” “Academic Intervention Services,” and “Competency Evaluation.” Yes, the new standards are probably necessary for some students for a number of reasons.
Yes, students who are not performing up to a specific standard should be given remediation. Few would argue against either.
Yet, through all of these assessments and evaluations, many teachers confess that the joy of teaching, the “fun in the classroom,” has been slowly disappearing. Instead, pressure and stress for both you and your students have appeared.
How often have you heard, or even said it yourself, “There is little time for anything other than preparing my students for all these assessments!”? In a nutshell, we need to make learning fun again—both for ourselves as teachers and, more importantly, for our kids as learners.
Plain and simple: Students love fun activities. Because of the many and varied skills that we are asked to teach our students each day, the classroom is an ideal place to incorporate fun activities to introduce and review the various language arts skills including grammar, mechanics, word development, vocabulary, research, critical thinking, and creative writing, to name just a few.
Fun involvement—what a wonderful way to achieve classroom goals and improve language arts skills at the same time! Will our students’ test scores suffer because we include some games and other enjoyable and worthwhile activities in our curriculum?
No! Studies support the fact that students retain more when they are actively involved or have “hands on” in the learning process.
Through such activities, students will certainly absorb more information as they learn, review, and retain concepts in your classroom. Plus, they will be enjoying themselves at the same time! What a great combination!
The 181 entertaining activities in English Barnstormer's! will make your students’ time in the classroom informative, enjoyable, and entertaining.
Students will look forward to these creative, ready-to-use, classroom-tested activities. These learning activities can function as introductions, reinforcements, or homework assignments.
They can be used as individual, group, or whole-class activities.
