Pick Up Sticks/Drop Sticks Game

I did a presentation on classroom strategies recently, and this is one of my most popular activities from that session. The idea is to use it as a tool for review and reinforcement.

On your sticks write a concept (s) that you would like to review.  I did morphemes with my tutoring students.  Here is how it works.

1.  The teacher or students drop the sticks on the table.
2.  The students take turns picking up a stick
3.  If the student moves any other sticks as they are going for their stick of choice, they lose a turn.  In
     other words, it's a test of fine motor skills grabbing those sticks without moving another one.
4.  The student names the concept (read the word, name the math fact, says the letter sound- or like in
      Jeffie's class reads the word that represents a sound that she gave to the student).
5.  The student with the most sticks wins. Or it can just be r/r and not a competition.
6.  After (or before even) you can lay all of the sticks out and have the students take turns tracking
     underneath and reading the words, phrases, etc.

Here are a few of the pictures:

Teaching Syllables With Hand Motions

I think that the kinesthetic modality is so important when teaching students, especially those with a learning difference.  When teaching the structure of language, specifically syllables, I use the following hand motions.  Hope this will be helpful in your classroom!

Closed Syllable:
When a vowel is closed in by a consonant the vowel is short.
Silent E Syllable:
When a vowel is followed by a consonant and silent e the vowel is long.