Annotation Relay - A Fun Way to Practice Annotation Skills and Other Test-Taking Strategies
It’s no secret that testing season can sometimes be really boring. “Take a quiz” this and “answer these questions” that and honestly, if I’m bored of teaching it, then I can only imagine how my students must feel. Actually, I lied. They DO tell me:
“Mrs. Marks, this is boring.”
“Mrs. Marks, can we do something else?”
Or, they’ll just groan and sigh and roll their eyes.
Whomp whomp.
Although, I cannot blame them. Our students already have a hard enough time focusing as it is without adding in lessons that will make you fall asleep. They are just children after all. As I’m sure you’ve learned throughout your training and personal experience, children need to be engaged in the lesson, just like we need to be engaged when we are forced to sit in a Professional Development and watch the Teach Like a Champion video for the umpteenth time (iykyk).
I digress. The other day it was in our lesson plans to read a passage and annotate it together. That’s it. Great discussion points were listed, sure, but would that reach every student? Probably not. (Like I said… engagement is the key!!!) So I came up with this game called Annotation Relay. It was my way to meet my students where they were at and attempt to make the otherwise snoozefest lesson a bit more engaging.
I wanted to share a resource with you that can help you get started with this will even LESS prep than I did. The slides are ready to go for you with directions and rules, but you can edit them if desired. Keep reading to learn all about it.
What can this resource help with?
🏃♀️Building teamwork skills.
Your students will have to work together, after all. Teamwork is an important skill because it can not only help your classroom run smoother (if they’re good at it, that is), but it will help prepare them for when they’re adults and have to work with others around them.
🏃♀️Remembering strategies.
It’s a great way for them to practice the annotation strategies you’ve taught them all year long. Personally, it’s like pulling teeth trying to get my students to annotate properly, but they had no problem with it when they were playing this game.
Go figure.
🏃♀️Increased engagement.
As stated, this game is fun! No more griping and whining that we have to… *gasp* actually do work in school.
No more griping and whining until the game is over, at least. Then we’ll go back to our regularly scheduled program if there isn’t something else engaging to teach with!
🏃♀️Knowledge retention through whole body movement.
I don’t know about you, but even though I teach these strategies since the very beginning of the school year, all the knowledge seems to fly out the window as soon as they have to actually take a test. So, using their body to learn will help them retain the information they are learning!
What’s included?
It is a Google Drive download with 11 slides
A slide with a giant list of Google fonts to use
A Materials slide
A “Getting Started” slides
A Directions slide with pre-made directions as well as a blank one for you to type your own if you want to be spicy 🌶 and change the directions a bit.
A Rules slide with pre-made rules as well as a blank one for you to type to your heart’s content.
Three different slides to list the teams you want your students to work on.
How did MY Annotation Relay go?
What’s funny is, I sometimes have my best ideas 30 minutes before my kids walk into the room. So, the slide I made with directions is super ugly. That’s why I wanted to remake it and share it with you all!
In the future, since I already have the slides now, it will take no time at ALL.
But, there were a few things I did to prepare, and what you will need to do as well if you want to play this game:
Put up the velcro dartboard I got from Amazon few years ago (Amazon is life) and make a scoreboard. (I think the one I personally go is out of stock as of writing this, but there are other options available.) HOWEVER, you can definitely play this game without getting the dartboard. I’m sure you have a bin or a bucket somewhere as well as some paper. Ball up the paper and use the bucket to throw the ball into! Maybe you can put tape on the floor to mark different distances so they can earn different numbers of points.
Made a quick slide with the directions and rules. Mine was ugly but the one I remade for y’all is pretty nice if I do say so myself!
Make sure my kids had access to their passage.
Review the annotation expectations with my kiddos.
Split the students into groups.
Sectioned off the passage with my kids so they all looked identical.
Materials I needed:
A passage to read (of course).
Notebook paper and a pencil for each student.
My dart board, although, as stated previously, you can choose anything you would like, of course, like basketball, bowling, or even just a balled-up piece of paper and a bucket, etc.).
A way to keep score.
A timer to keep things on track.
The directions:
Long story short, each team was responsible for annotating their passage (I use a chunking strategy, which I can potentially talk about in another post). We sectioned the passage off into about 5 parts or so. Each time their team would finish annotating a section, they would come to me, and I would check it and let them know if they could try to score or not.
If they ALL annotated on their paper correctly, I let them each get a turn (I let them each try until they stuck the velcro ball once each). If what they wrote made no sense, they had to go back and fix it.
If YOU play this game, you can make it a competition to where whoever is the first one to finish “wins”, then go for it. I made it to where they ALL had time to finish, but the winner was who got the most points.
Have fun!
If you download this resource, let me know what you think by leaving a review! Also, I would ✨LOVE✨ to see pictures of you and your kids having fun! Tag me on TikTok or Instagram! My handle is @teachandachieve on both platforms.
Questions, comments, or concerns? Drop any of those below and I’ll get back to you as quickly as possible.
Until next time!
-Aimee ♡
Heads up! The links included are items that I use and love. If you take action (i.e. make a purchase) after clicking one of the affiliate links, I’ll earn some coffee money ☕️ , but you will not pay a higher price. Win win! ❤️
