I Actually Won Something...

I never win anything that is by chance! My name never gets drawn out of the hat, I don't win the scratch tickets, I am never the 1 millionth shopper.

This morning our superintendent started off the day by pulling names out of hats for things that she had picked up at a teacher store earlier last week. There were some great things and it was exciting at first seeing all the great things, then I remembered...I don't win things.

Well wasn't I surprised when she said my name...I was SHOCKED actually. I was just starting to say to my neighbor, "my name NEVER gets pulled out of hats".

I was able to pick up the game Spot It!, I ran down the aisle just like on the 'Price is Right' (actually our art teacher was humming the theme song in the row behind me), picked up my prize, and went back to my seat to read the directions. Then my head started to spin...wow what a great game and I could totally adapt this to content...if I had time.

So when I get time I am going to try to make a content specific game on Spot It! I am not really sure how this is going to happen yet. I am probably going to try to set it up in MS Excel. But I will definitely be sure to post it here when I do.

I have...Who has...

One of my favorite games for the classroom is "I have...Who has..." It is an entire class game and it keeps the kids attention because they never know who has the answer. I used it a lot in World History by making my own for the Egypt, Rome, and China units. It was a lot of work to make them. I wanted to get to a point where I would make them in math, but never got around to it and put in on my "list of things to do this summer". Well that list hasn't really gotten any smaller this summer.

But while perusing math blogs this afternoon I found several versions of the game on Mathwire. And I remembered my "list of things to do"...why recreate the wheel. I love it when teachers share things and don't expect any payment. Teachers are poor...we are here for the betterment of the students, and why recreate the wheel?

I have gotten some awesome games from this site. I usually get pretty overwhelmed because there is SOOOO much on this site, so I tried to only go to it when I am looking for something specific. But I stumbled upon it today while reading a new blog Let's Play Math.