5 Signs Flashback Fridays Might Be a Good Fit for Your Middle School ELA Classroom
This school year, I knew I wanted to do a better job of including active games and activities in my lessons. I also knew that I wanted to step up my spiral review. Kids were forgetting concepts we had talked about just a few months before!
To kill both birds with one stone, I instituted Flashback Fridays.
Each Friday, my students play an active learning game that reviews an ELA concept from the past. This could be something they should have learned in elementary school, or it might be something we covered earlier in the year.
We have sack races, we build leaning towers, we blindfold each other—it’s a fun time. But more importantly, it helps my students truly master our middle school ELA standards.
Not sure if Flashback Fridays are the right fit for your classroom? Here are five signs that Flashback Fridays are perfect for you.
You like to get kids up out of their seats.
Not every teacher loves this, but if you’re someone who gets excited when your students are up and moving, Flashback Fridays could be the perfect fit for you. Even a simple sorting activity can become a Flashback Friday game if you put the answers on index cards at the front of the room and make your kids sack-race to front to collect the right answers.
You prefer engaged noise to distracted silence.
Obviously, there are times for quiet work in any class, but when we’re playing our Flashback Friday games, my students are shouting and cheering (and sometimes even singing) for their teammates. I like to play some “Mission Impossible” or “Eye of the Tiger” to get everyone hyped up for their activities.
Your students forget what they’ve learned after they take a test or turn in an essay.
It happens to the best of us. My students used to cram for their quizzes and then forget everything they learned. But now that we are repeating the same concepts with different games and activities throughout the year, these standards stay at the front of their minds.
You like to feature your students on your school’s social media, in the newsletter, or in the yearbook.
Maybe this is a little shallow, but pictures of kids jumping through the air, stacking teetering towers, and stumbling around blindfolded will showcase your students’ learning better than a picture of a student with a worksheet at a desk. If you like to get your community excited about your students’ learning, it helps to have something fun to show them!
Your students are super hyper.
Something about seventh grade gives kids a humongous serving of energy, and I am here for it. If your students have as much bottled-up energy as mine do, Flashback Fridays can be a fun way to burn off that energy in a really positive way!
So how can you make Flashback Fridays a part of your routine this school year?
First, check out this blog post: How to Turn Any Assignment into a Game.
Then, download this Free List of 15 Learning Games.
And if you’re looking for a whole bunch of pre-made ELA games that you can print and use, starting this Friday, grab this Middle School ELA Game Bundle.
I hope your students love Flashback Fridays as much as mine do!