We have state testing coming up and our schedule is going to be screwed up for the entire week. I can't teach my normal content, as I won't be having ANY of my morning classes that week, but will have my afternoon classes EVERY day. Does anyone have any ideas for what I can do during those days (I want to keep it educational)? I teach English/Language Arts to middle schoolers. Thanks for any suggestions.
Pass-around stories are fun--give them an opening line, like "It was a dark and stormy night" and have them write for 5 minutes, then exchange papers and continue their classmate's story; repeat as long as you care to. Or challenge your students to write a paragraph 7 sentences long in which they don't repeat any words--my seniors struggled with that one! Ooh, have a "said" competition--put them in teams and give them five minutes to come up with as many alternatives to the word "said" as they can. Score it like Boggle--teams read their lists, and if another team has the same word, everyone crosses it out; only unique words earn points.
