Pirates and Parrots

It's the end of the first grading period and sight word assessments are in.  While I'm happy with the progress of the class, there is always room for improvement!  This class LOVES brain breaks in between activities, and it really cuts down on transition time.  Students are excited to get cleaned up and get to the brain break, and the brain break not only gets the wiggles out, but also provides extra practice on skills.

So far this year, our brain breaks have been mostly math songs from Harry Kindergarten- if you haven't checked out his work on You Tube, you really should.  But, I digress!  Back to Pirates and Parrots.  I needed some brain breaks that focus on reading skills.  This is something I learned from the I Teach First Conference with speaker Laureen Reynolds.  She told us about a game called Cowboys and Chickens, where students read sight words until they come to a cowboy or chicken on the screen.  When they see a cowboy, students yell, "Yeehaw!" and when they see a chicken, they yell, "Bawk-bawk!"

This is an adaptation of that game.  Basically, you can pick anything your students are interested in, or can match it up to whatever you are studying, like owls, bats, etc.  I chose pirates because, well,  I love pirates and who doesn't love making the good old, "Arrrr!" noise.  It's also a great tie in later to the /ar/ sound.  Personally, I'd prefer to use Johnny Depp as Captain Jack, but this is probably more school appropriate.  It's called Pirates and Parrots because I used to have a parrot in there, however, that noise was just too annoying!

So the rules are like this:  see a sight word, read it, see a pirate, yell, "Arrr!"  Easy, right?  The point is to get the kids to read the sight words as quickly and accurately as possible.  The pirates are just a fun way to keep the kids engaged.  I've been making these for my class and have posted one on TpT to share.  I really love this game and recommend it for whole class activities, small group interventions, or print out small slides and give them to individual students to practice on their own.  So fun!