The following testimonial was submitted by teacher Heidi Hisrich as part of Classcraft’s series on promoting physical activity in the classroom.
My PLTW Biomedical Science students love to get physical in their Classcraft random events!
From building pyramids to doing wall sits, to competing in push-up contests and thumb wars, the students love to compete in physical challenges. It wakes us up and gets us ready to learn, too.
We started out with me coming up with some of the events, such as Dance or Die and Thumb Wars. Then kids started suggesting their own ideas, and I began giving out XP to those who come up with creative random events, which is how the Pyramid Challenge and Wall Sits came to be.
Noodle Battle is a favorite random event that combines vocabulary review with physical competition. We learn lots of medical terms in class, so I put the roots on a wall, and I’ll call out a meaning like “sugar.” The kids have to race to hit the root and call out a vocabulary word that uses it (like hitting the root "gluc” and calling out “glucose”).
Thanks for sharing, Heidi! Stay tuned for more entries in our series on promoting physical activity with Classcraft!