Relay Races with Common and Proper Nouns

Happy Friday, Friends! 

And it is happy...I'm relaxing at home today after 2 1/2 days of school, one long night of parent teacher conferences, and one day of parent teacher conferences. Like Kristi, I've been battling the sinus junk this week too. It seems like this always hits me on PT Conference week. :-( 

I wanted to share a fun little activity we did on our short day. I recently read a blog post (I'm sorry I don't remember who it was--so if it was you, please feel free to comment below and I can add a link) that talked about turning pretty much anything into a relay race. 

We've been studying proper nouns and common nouns, so I decided to give it a try.

I already have students on color teams (4 students on each team), so we traveled to the gym for our relays. It would be great to do these outside, but it was cool on this particular morning and since I wasn't feeling too spiffy the gym worked just fine.

 

The kids raced to the end of the gym where several index cards waited for them. I had written common or proper nouns on them. Each team had two big signs that said common and proper. The students read their card and then placed it on the correct sign (or tried to). 

 The kids loved it! And it helped me see that we have a bit more work to do on sorting those nouns! Ha!

They actually did better on the next activity. I made several cards with proper nouns and proper noun phrases written incorrectly (not capitalized or not the entire phrase capitalized, etc.). Students had to figure out what was wrong and rewrite the nouns correctly on their whiteboards. 

Then I called each group to the front and had them explain their work.

So if you're looking for a little break from routine, give relay races a try. I definitely plan to come up with some more activities we can review in this way. 

Have a great weekend!

I'm hoping the long weekend will give me a chance to get to feeling better...