I wanted to post today about my FAVOURITE game to play with my class (as a whole class or in small groups). I first saw the idea in a year 5/6 teacher group that I’m in on Facebook and instantly loved it, so I’ve made lots of versions of it. If you haven’t heard of it, I’ll explain how it works. You will need to have a pot of lollipop sticks (or similar) with questions written on them. You will also need to have about 5 sticks with the word ‘kaboom’ written on it.
Now to play!
A child will take out a stick, read the question and answer it. If they get it right, they get to keep it. If they get it wrong, they put it back or it could get passed to another child. If they pick out a stick that says ‘kaboom’, they have to put ALL their sticks back in the pot. The winner is the child with the most sticks at the end of the time. The children LOVE it and it isn’t always the highest ability child that wins, as they may be unlucky and pick out a ‘kaboom’.
Here are some of the examples that I utse with my class:
This is my new favourite! I wrote out all of the year 3/4 and 5/6 spelling rule words and exception words and they use them to test each other at the end of a spelling lesson. For this one, one child takes out a stick and reads it to a second child, who then has to spell it. If they get it right, they keep it. If they get it wrong, it’s opened up to the other children in the group. There are still kaboom sticks to keep them on their toes! This one had surprising impact as even my lowest children were thinking really carefully about the spellings and were picking up a lot of sticks from other children getting them wrong through carelessness.
Mrs F's Classroom 
Those sound absolutely fab! Thank you
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I love these ideas, thank you for sharing! Definitely going to try these 🙂 Can I ask how you manage the activity with one set and a class of 30?
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Of course! I actually have lots of different ones, e.g spellings, tenses, punctuation etc which I rotate around tables so small groups have different ones. I do the times tables one as a whole class where if someone gets one wrong, another child can put their hand up and answer to win a stick. It keeps them all engaged because they all have to be listening for the question!
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Fab, thank you for your quick response! I will definitely be magpie’ing this idea! Think my class will really love this too. Thank you for sharing x
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Sarah, can I ask how you are able to organize all of the sticks without them being everywhere? I’m sure the organization bit is what will get me! This game here is one of my kids favs, though I must admit, we haven’t played it in a while. I think you’ll love it. http://english-4kids.com/gamestealbustswap.html
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Of course! I have them all in little pots, so there’s a pot for each of, say, the year 3/4 spellings, fractions, etc. I then have the pots in a tray so I can store them out of the way. I’ve not seen that game before- it looks good!
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