Games to Play During Remote Learning or Physically Distanced Learning
Games, brain breaks, Morning Meeting activities, and community building exercises are a vital part of learning in our 3rd grade classroom. I’ve (Nina) been thinking a lot about how we can continue to incorporate games and brain breaks even when teaching over video or while staying six feet apart. Here are some of the ideas we came up with - Gabby is the game genius, so I asked her to help me brainstorm! We came up with two lists, which are below. I tried to link to a description or provide it myself unless it seems really self-explanatory, but if anything is not clear, please comment below and we will give you more details.
On live video (Zoom, Google hangouts, etc)
Keep in mind that a whiteboard with names or teams behind you where you can show them their points and keep updating it or keep track of rounds, etc. will help many of these! Also, depending on your setup, many of these games would also work in person and physically distanced!
Name and a movement! (and then the group does it back to you) as a fun greeting
20 questions (younger students often need a refresher on what is a “yes or no question” and practice re-wording their questions to fit their criterion).
Mystery number (or country, city, classmate, food, letter/sound, book, etc): like 20 questions but more subject focused. Great way to practice Math notation!
Mystery voice! - all students look away from the camera (in the classroom, close their eyes until the teacher has told them to stop) and the teacher chooses a student to be the ‘mystery voice’. The teacher gives the mystery voice the thumbs up to speak and they say the agreed upon sentence (ours was, “I am an awesome third grader”) while all classmates continue to have eyes closed and the mystery voice student also closes their eyes to blend back in with the group. The teacher says, “Okay, eyes open, raise your hand if you have a guess for who is the mystery voice!”. Take 3 guesses and see if the mystery voice student can win! We found this was a great way to integrate fun adjectives to elevate vocabulary (enigmatic, deceptive etc.) while providing praise. It was also a fun way to settle into a nice (anticipatory) quiet, and let kids be creative and silly (with structure).
Dance break (not a game, but fun!)
Great Wind Blows (can’t do the walking around part, but could raise your hands and then pick someone to go next)
Telling a story where each person adds a sentence (teacher or volunteer student who is old enough could type it and share their screen so everyone can follow along)
Simon Says: a classic movement break! You may need to operate on the honor system and let students decide when they are out.
“Hangman” but make it less violent and change the name/ complete a different image (like a cute simple dog face!) when they guess the wrong letters to fill in the blanks.
Jeopardy (need to set up questions beforehand)
Pictionary (person who is drawing draws on paper and everyone else pins that video)
Charades (same as pictionary but you act it out in front of your webcam)
Reverse charades (everyone acts one thing out and the teacher or one student has to guess what the group is doing by looking at everyone’s frames! This sounds hilarious to us. You also might have experienced this as “Heads Up” played on someone’s phone.)
Scattegories (pick 3 categories, 3 letters.. Would need to send them the paper to fill in their boxes)
I Spy (using your camera’s frame and you can set up a little scene)
Press conference (one person ‘leaves’ and the rest of the group decides who that person will be (someone famous or familiar that everyone knows). When the person “returns,” members of the group asks them questions (which also give them hints about their pretend identity) and they have to answer the questions and try and guess who they are. They usually get 3 guesses.
I’m going on a trip…: Students have to guess the pattern of what you’re bringing with you. This is so much fun and once students get the hang of it, they will volunteer to be the leader.
Emotions Game: someone acts out emotions or you have to guess the emotion based on the image or a peer’s facial expression on video! This might be fun in teams with a timer (20 seconds for each emotion or acting out, etc).
While physically distancing:
All of these games can be played while staying six feet apart. However, we’d recommend having some kind of virtual (dots, carpet squares, tape on the floor) so students know where to stand. You might want to practice staying on your spots before you jump into a game and have a signal or word for when students need to check if they are still on their spots.
Vegetable off: two students face off. The teacher asks the audience for an adjective and a vegetable (audience members whisper their suggestions or write them down so the competing kids can’t hear them). Then you count down, 3, 2, 1, and announce the adjective and vegetable (for example, “nervous green bean!) and the competing kids both have to embody a nervous green bean. We usually only give them 5-10 seconds with a verbal countdown as this can be hard to keep up. This would be terrifyingly awful for shy kiddos so maybe just keep this one as kids who volunteer, but it is always good for getting everyone laughing and awake! We have used it as a tie breaker at the end of a game when there are 2 kids left as the winners.
Read My Mind: (this is a game for kids in pairs). Put your thumb up when you have your word, countdown from 3 and both say your word at the same time. For example, I might say “shoes” and you might say “cheese.” On our next round, we need to try to think about what word might combine elements of shoes and cheese. We are trying to get to the same word over time through associations.
Freeze dance: this is a classic! Play music and when the music stops, the last person to freeze is out. You may want to give students a box or circle to dance in to help them maintain physical distancing.
Heads Up, Seven Up: another classic! I remember playing this in elementary school. You would need to find a way to modify the tapping the thumb step (perhaps tapping with your foot three times or moving something with your foot), but ask your students to think of solutions that could work with staying 6+ feet apart and I know they will have lots of creative ideas.
Around the World (we’ve done this with math facts, vocabulary, and geography!)
Rock Paper Scissors Evolution: I’ve also played this with students where the loser becomes part of the winner’s entourage and cheers them on. That might be really hard with physical distancing though as the game ends with two large groups of people each cheering on their champion.
Hope this list brings some moments of joy to your classroom (virtual or physical)! Please share any others as we’d love new ideas to try out. One last plug - Responsive Classroom always has new ideas and resources for Morning Meeting activities/games as well.