Archive for February 20, 2008

The lessons that I have enjoyed the most this year have been when we have adapted to the children’s enthusiasm for certain activities. Before our half term break we had one of those sessions.

In our literacy lessons we have been learning about the punctuation pyramid since September. It is a simple graphic that shows the various punctuation marks and their corresponding National Curriculum (UK) level for writing. Learning what is included in the pyramid and using it as a tool to assess their own writing is something that we consider to be very valuable. We have 3D pyramids on the children’s tables and a large copy of the punctuation pyramid on the wall as a display.

We recently purchased some software that had a pyramid builder game included and the morning session I am referring to saw both Year 5 classes working on practicing to build the pyramid from scratch.

I soon mentioned to my colleague, across the corridor, about a little competition to see who could build the pyramid the quickest. We were soon having a inter classroom battle to build the pyramid the fastest. Everyone engaged and working really hard. And this is where we began to sense their enthusiasm for the the activity. We decided to adapt the session to harness this fervent engagement with the task. After some time working with the pyramid builder and ensuring each child had had plenty of practice independently we announced a tournament.

We shuffled tables around to form a long row and brought all of the laptops together in my classroom. We had two rows of 8 laptops facing each other. The arena was ready! And the pyramid gladiators soon picked up the invitation to be involved. The task was simple: build a complete pyramid as quick as they could without any omissions or errors. Once they thought it was complete they needed to stand up. The simple knockout tournament began.

The children responded so well to the change of furniture and the change of style of session. We sometimes shy away from some light hearted competition in primary for fear of labelling people “winners” and “losers” but conducted in the right spirit it engages and motivates.

After 3 rounds we had a final battle with two laptops facing each other in the centre of the arena. Needless to say we had lots of fun and the children enjoyed every minute.

If you want to have a go at a Punctuation Pyramid competition with your class then you can try this Befuddlr puzzle for the image above, once it is complete it will display a time in seconds. Let me know how you get on and perhaps we can have an inter school leaderboard!