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I don’t know about you, but I am often amazed at how quickly days can fly by at school. Time can quickly slip by and it can feel like there’s just not enough hours to teach. This is why I am a firm believer in routines and maximising the time spent in High Value Activities, or “learning” Emina Mclean has a recent blog that explains what High Value Activities are. If you haven’t read it yet then check it out here (While you’re there, make sure that you read all the other posts as it is a phenomenal resource!) Since reading this post I’ve been reflecting on the yield that every learning activity returns. Time is too precious to waste doing busy work that doesn’t benefit my students. Rather than dwelling on the moments where I feel that I am wasting valuable time, I thought I’d share some activities that are gems that keep on giving. These gems are activities that are high yield. They optimise my students’ chances to learn. Students are able participate constantly. These gems are flexible and can be adapted for a range of situations. And they are a lot of fun too! GEM 1: Open, Shut ThemWhen my daughter was three, I took her to the local library every Friday for storytime. Stuart, the local librarian, would entertain this group of toddlers through a journey of stories and songs. The highlight was when he would sing the song ‘Open, Shut Them’. If you don’t know it then the lyrics go: Open shut them, open shut them Give a little clap, Open shut them, open shut them Put them in your lap, Creep them, creep them right up to your chin Open wide your little mouth, but do not let them in. Roll them, Roll them, Roll them just like this. Shake them, shake them, Blow a little kiss. We would sing it through once… and then came the moment we were eagerly anticipating: the silly version! Stuart would lead us as we sang it through with actions that were the opposite of what we were singing. The kids loved it, and the adults loved the kids loving it! So, of course, when I started planning my preschool-school transition days, I borrowed this fantastic idea. My future students loved it as much as my daughter did! This song was a brilliant activity to help kids feel comfortable and have fun at their future school. We sang it daily at the start of the year, and I could see my students get excited about it. And when we started adding verses, the true potential of this song started to be unleashed. It is brilliant for teaching opposites. Some of the typical verses go:
Adding simple actions helps ensure that students learn antonyms. And then I tweaked it again. I started adding specific vocabulary words that we had been learning. We read The Very Cranky Bear and sang ‘cranky and cheerful’. We learnt about forces in science and sang ‘push and pull’. We heard how Miss Muffett was frightened by a spider and sang ‘frightened and calm’. Open, Shut Them is a gift that keeps on giving. And, of course, we always end it with the silly version! GEM 2: BingoMy class love bingo! Currently, we are playing it in maths to practise recognising the numbers to 20. I have a collection of boards with nine squares on each one. What I love is that the same resources can be used for a lot of different purposes. Students put coloured counters on their boards as each number is called out or displayed. With a 0-20 number Bingo board, I can:
With a letter bingo board, I can:
Now that I’ve set up my bingo board document, I can use ‘replace all’ to quickly replace the items on the students’ boards. This means that I can easily use it to practise reading words. I’ve attached an example. You might notice that there are some similar words (trek/track, yet/vet, panic/picnic). I want my students to closely attend when they read. Using similar words means that they have to pay attention. If every word started with a different sound, then all I could be checking is their initial letter recognition! I’ve attached pdf versions of each of these bingo boards for your use. Once you’ve printed and laminated it, you’ll find that you can use them again and again. And once students have got the rules down, they can focus on the learning.
GEM 3: Colour RunGrowing up in Australia in the 90s, Fruit Salad was a popular game in the schoolyard. The teacher would assign everyone one of four different fruits, and you would run across the basketball court whenever your fruit was called out. If you were the slowest in your fruit, then you would join a group called ‘jam’ or ‘compost’. If ‘fruit salad’ got called out, then everyone would run! Some teachers would change this game to ‘traffic jam’ where each group was a different car type… We are learning about colours in Art, and I realised that Fruit Salad could easily be adjusted to consolidate our knowledge of colours. I use the primary colours (red, blue, yellow) as groups. When their colour is called out, students run to the other side. The slowest student isn’t sent to another group because I want everyone to be involved as much as possible. When I call out ‘rainbow’, everyone runs (because every colour is in the rainbow). I’ve taught warm and cool colours, so I can also call out ‘warm’ and red and yellow groups will run. If I call out ‘cool’, then blue will run. And then there are the secondary colours. I can call out ‘green’ (blue and yellow run), ‘purple’ (blue and red run) or ‘orange’ (yellow and red run). I can see that I can adapt ‘Fruit Salad’ for any topic that has categories (living things, properties of matter, types of rocks), and this is why I think it is a gem of an activity. So what are your gems? What activities do you use that have a huge yield on your students’ learning? I am always on the lookout for new ideas to use to help the children in my class. References:Emina McLean's phenomenal blog can be found at www.eminamclean.com/blog Seriously, it is a much better blog than this one, so make sure you check it out! Our school uses Decodable Readers Australia to support students learning to read. They are great stories, often with an Aussie flavour. Have a look at their website and find out more about them https://www.decodablereadersaustralia.com.au/ 
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I'm JamesI have been teaching for over a decade in Australia. I have worked as a classroom teacher, lead teacher, learning specialist, and principal. Archives
April 2025
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