This game goes by many names—Zap, Boom, and now Oh No!
The Oh No! game is easy to make, easy to teach, easy to play, easy to differentiate, and easy to extend.
Each cup of words I make has about 35-45 craft sticks and 12-13 heart words. I write each word three times and I also put in three Oh No! sticks. This amount seems to work well with a table of four students. If you find that the sticks are running out and there are no more to pull, just add in one or two more Oh No! sticks so that students have to put their words back in on a more frequent basis.
There are two things I love about this game (besides it being so easy and inexpensive to create). First, there are three of each word—the, the, the, we, we, we, etc. This means that students will see the same word several times while playing, thereby greatly increasing the chance the words will stick. Second, if a student doesn’t know a word, they can either just put the stick back in the cup or they can ask a friend what it says and then keep it. Since they’re trying to collect as many sticks as possible, they soon figure out that it’s better to ask a friend. And by so doing, they might just learn that word.
The paper each student has—upon which they write the number of words they accumulated before having to put them all back—is an extra component to the game that adds in counting and a touch of competition, if even with just oneself.
It was music to my ears when my students were playing this during centers this past week. “We again? I just got we!” I heard. And, “Hey, I got like, too!” I wish I had captured it on video.
Remember to only use words that you’ve officially introduced and worked on; otherwise, the game might be more frustrating than fun. Also, just a reminder that a word is a heart word until you’ve taught the phonics that no longer make it a heart word. I haven’t officially taught the long e sound to my class whole group so we is still a heart word for us.
And in case you’re wondering or worried that I am promoting the memorization of words—we analyze and talk about our heart words at other times of the day. My goal is make sure students can tell me why a word is a heart word and which part of it is the hard part to remember by heart. This will help them map the words for reading and spelling.
I am looking forward to using this at least once weekly during centers as a fun way for students to practice the heart words I’ve introduced. I also plan on using it during interventions for those few students who didn’t learn the first semester heart words as well as they should have. It will be efficient to have two students playing it at the same time, not really as a competition but because I’ll be able to teach them both simultaneously.
In the second half of the school year, I will create two additional cups full of new heart words that I teach. I’ll use different colored craft sticks so that I can keep the collection of words straight. My next two cups of words will be more challenging and may not be appropriate for all students. (In the video above, you’ll see two different sizes of craft sticks as a way to keep them separated.) Another way to keep the words organized is to put the same color of dot on the “up” end of each set of sticks.
This little game has a lot of potential. Letter names? Letter sounds? Numbers? Math facts? Photos of students at the beginning of the year as everyone’s trying to learn everyone else’s names? I just wouldn’t overdo it; you’ll probably want to reserve the excitement of the game for learning heart words.
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