Site Word Cube Game

For those of you who read my blog and are not truly interested in teaching ideas, then disregard this post and check back later!

But, for those of you who are...KEEP READING! 

Today we tried out a new center. I am picking up where the first semester teacher left off and continuing on with Scholastic's Alphatales. This week's Alphatales' story was based on the letter n. So, I chose to focus on the words nice, new, and now - all of which are within our story. (For this activity, I also threw in a few basic site words they should definitely know by now as a review.)

I gave each pair of students two cubes made from paper. (I just googled a box template). One of the cubes had a color per side and the other cube had a site word per side. One student would roll the color cube and the other student would roll the site word cube. Whatever color they rolled, they used that color of pencil to write the site word in their notebooks.

At the end of each center, I had the groups tell me how many times they wrote each word. I then added up the totals from each group. At the end of our language arts time, I showed the students the results. We discussed which word we wrote the most and which word we wrote the least. (This part wasn't necessary, but it incorporated a little math into our language arts time! And this particular group of students loves graphs and data, so why not?!)

This is a very simple game to play! The students seemed to enjoy it. If you have the resources, allow the students to use colored pens to write the words instead of pencils/crayons/markers. I know I always loved using pens when I was this age! I have also seen a version of this game where they used two spinners instead of cubes. Or, maybe your students are past the site word stage. This would also be a fun way for 1st/2nd/3rd graders to practice their spelling words! Either way, it allows the students to practice writing and reading site words.