Classroom Activities for Students: It’s difficult to find fun activities for the classroom when you as a teacher have so many other things on your plate. For that reason, I have compiled a list of 30 successful classroom activities that I have used over the years.

Classroom activities for students:

1. Diary entries- Have students write diary entries from the point of view of various characters
2. Write a letter to a character-Have the students be themselves writing a letter to a character. They can introduce themselves, talk about what they have in common, talk about something they like about the character, ask the character to be friends (not to get too goofy).
3. Act out a scene-one of my favorite activities is to have students act out a scene from the reading. Students choose parts and get really into it. They can be divided up by groups and asked to act out different scenes in front of the class.
4. Philosophical chairs-Divide the class into halves based on a controversial statement. Have students have a casual debate about the topic.
5. Interview with a character-Have students create interview questions for a mock interview with a character. Have students act out mock interview or film it on a source like Flip grid.
6. Create a timeline of events. Make a large timeline and put it up on the bulletin board. As major events occur add them to the timeline. Students can use the timeline to predict future events in the story.
7. Create a book trailer-There are many website that can be used to create book trailers, I personally prefer Youtube. Student can create videos for book trailers and easily upload them to Youtube.
8. Watch the movie-An absolute student favorite! If there is a movie that goes with your novel, watch it after you have finished the book.
9. Compare and contrast the movie to the book. Create a Venn diagram and compare contrast the movie to the book. See how many students liked the book better.
10. Rewrite the ending-Have students create a different ending for the book and act it out in front of their peers. If you don’t have time for them to act it out they can use a source like Flip Grid.
11. Send questions to the author-During the unit I have students create questions for the author. You can have them pull together these questions and send them to the author through some form of social media.
12. Create an Instagram page-students can create a Facebook page belonging to one of the main characters.
13. Write the next chapter-depending on where you are in the book, have students do a prediction activity by writing the next chapter to the book.
14. Chalk the setting-using erasable chalk have students draw the setting out on the blacktop or in the middle of the quad-if allowed. Take a step back and look at the similarities and differences in the students visualizations.
15. Compare and contrast two characters-choose two characters from the book and compare/contrast using a Venn diagram
16. Pretend you are introducing a character to the class. Stand in front of the class with another student and introduce the character. This is one of the great classroom activities for students.
17. PA announcement-put students in pairs and have them write an advertisement for the book. Have students share on the PA system one morning.
18. Design a new cover-design a cover with the title and a new image on the cover. Work with a partner and take time to come up with your image.
19. Four corner discussion-Have a four corner discussion. Start with a controversial statement and have students decide if they agree, strongly agree, disagree, strongly disagree. Have students go to their respective corners. Go around and do three rounds where they share and discuss their point-of-views. This is one of the great classroom activities for students.
20. Educational Bingo-Create bingo boards with questions from prior lessons. Put the answers on the bingo boards and ask the questions to students. Students will mark the board with the correct answer.
21. Blind artist-Pair students up and sit them back to back. Provide an image to student A. Students A will describe image to student B. Student B tries to draw the image as best as they can given the description.
22. Sentence race-Two teams, two separate sides of the board. Students go up to the board, take a piece of paper which has a vocabulary word written on it, writes a sentence on the board using the word in a sentence. The team that gets the most words used correctly in sentences-wins!
23. Chain spelling-Teacher first writes a word on the board. First student is asked to take the last three or four letters of the word and form another word. The next student has to repeat the same and this is continued until a student fails to form a word or misspells it. The game can be made tighter by restricting them to certain category of words.
24. Blindfold conversation-This is a team building activity for a new classroom. First teacher asks everybody to introduce themselves in a few sentences. Once it is done, class would be divided into two teams. A student from a team is called up and his eyes would be tied. A student from the other team is then called and asked to say something. The student who is blinded has to recognize him/her from his voice. If he/she failed to do so, he/she may also ask certain questions related to what was discussed in the introduction to identify the person. This is one of the great classroom activities for students.
25. Jumping the line-A line is drawn on the class floor and one side of the line will be marked ‘true’ and the other as ‘false’. The students are asked to stand on the line. Teacher would pick a student and says a statement based on what is taught in the class. If the student thinks that it is true, he/she has to jump to the true side or else the false side.
26. Thanking for the compliment-This is an ice-breaking classroom activity, which can boost the confidence and encourage students to complement each other’s. The teacher can give a sheet of paper to each student in the class which has to be pinned on their backs then she has to ask every student to think of a compliment to write for their friends. When the whole class is done with it, ask them to read it aloud.
27. Missing cards-This is a memory game for any level students that improve their attention to detail. The class is first divided into two. Teacher has a set of cards which denotes different categories. A student from the first team is asked to come up and teacher shows him/her 5 cards for 10 seconds. He/she then shuffles the card and shows only 4 cards next time. The student has to recall his/her memory and identify the missing card. The team with the most number of correct card recalls win.
28. Mime-The class is first divided into teams. Teacher writes action words such as running, gardening, singing etc in pieces of paper. It is then folded and placed in a bag or box. A student from a team comes and picks a paper and enacts the word. The other team has to guess the word correctly to win a point.
29. Brown paper bag-This is a great ice breaker for the beginning of the year. Ask students to place three things from home in a brown paper bag and share each item with the class sharing the significance of each thing. This is one of the great classroom activities for students.
30. Socratic seminar-Have students create questions using Costa’s question cues. Choose the best questions. Have students answer the questions at home in preparation for the seminar. Place the chairs in one large circle in preparation for the seminar. Choose two leaders to facilitate the class discussion. Have leaders read the questions one at a time giving students a chance to respond. Tall students as the respond and use as grade. This is one of the great classroom activities for students.

I would love to hear what classroom activities for students you are using in your classroom. Leave in the comments below! For my article on fun short stories click HERE

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