- Chairs can be used
Fruit Bowl invites students to listen, negotiate, move, build, and represent knowledge kinesthetically. Everyone, including the teacher, is up, moving and playing together. This strategy lends itself well to the exploration of a targeted set of vocabulary, since there is a lot of repetition and the scope is limited.
Ask the group to set up their chairs in a wide circle, or invite students to stand in a circle with a piece of tape, or non-moveable floor marker to designate each standing spot. The teacher does not make a spot in the circle. Either construct with group or share a pre-determined list of 3-4 names of fruit. It can be useful to provide a visual anchor chart of fruit names as well, particularly if the vocabulary is new. Go around the circle and assign each person a fruit name from the list; it is important that at least 3 people have the same fruit names so use fewer fruit names if the group is small. Make sure the teacher has a fruit name too! Next, stand in the middle of the circle and say the name of a fruit on the list (it does not need to be your own). All participants with the fruit name must find a new space/seat. The teacher tries to find a spot as well. This leaves a different person standing in the middle. They repeat the process. Rather then saying a single fruit, the person in the middle can also say “Fruit Bowl,” at which point everyone must change chairs. If the same person gets in the center multiple times, they can be asked to pick someone who hasn’t been in the center to take their place.
- What did we notice about yourself and the group in this activity?
- What type of strategies did you discover, and use to be successful in this game?
- How can we use these same strategies in our work together this year/in this unit?
- Only one person should be in a chair or standing space at a time.
- Reading/Writing: Have students play as words that represent different kinds of chunk sounds in order to work on syllabication (“ch” “th” “cr”). Then the caller in the center picks a word from the list (or is told a new word) and then everyone who has a word that also uses the chunk sound must move.
- Foreign Language: Have multiple students play as “I form,” “You form,” etc. The center person calls out a verb from the list (or is given a verb) and students must move if the verb is in their form.
- Math: Have students play as a 2-dimensional shape and calls out characteristics from a list (at least 3 vertices) or they play as number and calls out characteristics like place value, divisible by, factor of, multiple of, etc.
James Thompson