Trashketball!

     State testing starts next week.  (I can only assume a rant & rave post about that will follow soon after).  In the meantime, here's a review game that I played with my students to help them with figurative language!
     The game is called Trashketball, and the Powerpoint & instructions can be found here.  To be honest, it's a review game that could be easily adapted to any standard or skill your kids are working on, but it was a perfect culmination to our frenzied figurative language unit.
     I gave each group of 4-6 students a marker and 10 sheets of paper.  While viewing Powerpoint slides, the students work in groups to answer questions about the type(s) of figurative language displayed.  They have about a minute to come up with the correct answer, then we go over it.  Any group with the correct answer gets to save their answer sheet.  Wrong answers go straight to the recycling bin (I'm nothing if not eco-friendly).  After all 10 questions have been answered, the teams get their correct answer sheets back.  Some groups had all 10, others had as few as 6 or 7.  Then they get a chance to shoot their correct answers into the recycling bin (see?  eco-friendly!).  We drew lines with tape on the floor too represent a 1-point line, a 2-point line, and a 3-point line.
     At first, the kids thought the lines were too close and it would be super easy.  They were totally wrong.  We had several shots bank off the whiteboard behind the "basket", and quite a few also bounce right off my (ceiling-mounted) projector.
     The team with the most points at the end won the game-and they couldn't stop talking about how much fun they'd had.  Apparently, I should try this strategy more often.