Words with Friends!

My class had so much fun with this activity that I wanted to share it with you.  We are working on writing neatly (for an audience to be able to READ the printing), leaving spaces, rereading to be sure what is written makes sense, and using punctuation marks.   To practice question marks, I wanted the kids to be able to practice writing questions to friends. I thought Words with Friends Kindergarten Style would be a fun way to do that- and it was!

We began on the rug, brainstorming good questions to ask friends .  This was a great start for the kids, so they were thinking what they wanted to learn about their friends.  (Do you have any pets?  What is your favorite dinner?  What is your favorite game?  What do you like about school?  What color do you like?  Can you skip? What holiday is your favorite?) I wrote  several question words on the board to review and to use for reference:  What, Who, Where, When, Why, How.  We also reviewed how to write a question mark.

I made booklet for each student.  Then, I modeled how and where they would write their question on the paper.

I had the kids partner up and sit across from each other at the tables.  The person across from them would be their writing buddy who they would be writing to this round.  Each child had a different colored pen. (This just made it easier to see who wrote what this time.)  Once both of the partners had their  questions written, they switched books, read the question, and answered the questions on the bottom part of the paper. Then, they switched back and read the answers.   Simple and fun!

After all the partners were done, I had the kids on one side of the tables shift down one seat.  (It reminded me of "speed dating" scenes in movies...)  The new person across the table was the new partner for the next question!  

We did three rounds of question writing, which took about 20-25 minutes, just so you have an idea.  I felt like that was a perfect number of questions/answers for them, especially for our first time. 

It was interesting to see how when a friend can't read someone's writing, they work a little harder to make it neat- because it matters!



If you'd like a copy of my  Words with Friends, just click the picture below.  I made a few different writing pages.  I made 3 copies of the first writing page, then stapled those pages with the cover to make booklets for the kids to use. I also included a full page writing paper, because I'm going to have the kids write longer letters to friends for another activity someday soon.

Have fun, and thanks for stopping by!