Game Day: Providing Differentiated Instruction & Practice

Game Day Planning

Many teachers plan a weekly game day, using stations and rotating activities to best meet the varied needs of learners in their classrooms. One station is often the teacher, who is able to meet with small groups of students for remediation, enrichment, a quick assessment or to present problem-solving activities.

This weekly session benefits all students who are actively involved playing games while the teacher meets with small groups. By carefully planning both the small groups and the rotation through activities, teachers may easily differentiate activities to provide additional practice or enrichment for students who have mastered the week's concepts and skills. Students enjoy being in control of their learning for the day and remain engaged throughout the allotted time.

Game days serve many purposes in the elementary math classroom:

• Small Group Instruction: teachers meet with small groups for students for reteaching or enrichment activities, as needed
• Informal Assessment: teachers use some of the time for informat assessments of unit goals
• Problem Solving: students work independently or in pairs on open-ended problems. They may peer edit responses as well.
• Basic Facts Practice: students play games to develop fluency in teh basic math facts
• Catch-Up: students use some of the time to catch up on missing homework or classwork, as needed

Try it!

The end of the year is a great time to try out this practice, if it is not a regular feature of your classroom. Package the games and materials for easy retrieval by students and use a whiteboard to create the rotation schedule and groups for the day. Quickly run through the activities and your expectations for student performance, then set the timer and let the groups get started. Use the time to meet with small groups you have identified as needing reteaching, guided practice or enrichment. Have students meet with you around a table, if possible, so it is easy for you to monitor individual student's work.

Use team planning time to coordinate with your grade-level partners. This is an effective way to plan for this differentiated instruction and to maximize preparation time. Share the planning; share the wealth!

A simple Game Day Group/Center Chart can be created on a whiteboard [see picture to left] using color-coding and pocket group charts to organize students and free up the teacher to work uninterrupted with small groups of students. Teachers often use a timer to signal a clean-up time of 1-2 minutes before groups move to the next center or station.