There truly isn’t much else that engages my kids INSTANTLY like the dry erase boards do. Am I right?! I want to share with you 8 NO PREP and ENGAGING activities that you can try tomorrow in your classroom no matter what your grade level nor your subject area!
This post is one in a series of THREE DRY ERASE BOARD POSTS! The other posts include:
DRY ERASE BOARD WORD WORK AND SIGHT WORD ROUTINES
DRY ERASE BOARD ENGAGING ACTIVITIES FOR LITTLE LEARNERS
please note: this post includes some affiliate links!
All you need to give these 8 engaging activities a try tomorrow in your classroom are some dry erase boards, erasers, and of course your favorite color of EXPO markers! Any of these activities could also be done in under 10-15 minutes, too! I’m sharing a lot of my go-to moves in my classroom when I only have those random 8 minutes before lunch. THESE are the types of activities we turn to!
1. DRY ERASE LISTS
To quote my favorite pastor – “I love lists so much that if I had a list of the things I love most, lists would be on the top of that list.” But seriously. ALL THE LISTS on our dry erase boards! We write lists of nouns, lists of pronouns, lists of color words, lists of proper nouns, lists of adjectives – you name it, my class has listed it. And I love getting to see what all they come up with on their white boards!
2. QUESTION CIRCLE
This is a GREAT one for little learners to practice SO many things but – can I get an amen when I say that little learners need LOTS of practice constructing their own QUESTIONS that aren’t telling sentences nor stories. RIGHT?! So my kids would love these QUESTION CIRCLE activity. We would take five minutes a day for a few weeks at the beginning of the school year to bring our white dry erase boards to the carpet and ask questions! They would write the question, turn their dry erase boards towards me, and I would answer the question. Then, they erase and repeat! It’s SO fun and a great (silent) way for them to get to know me!
3. SENTENCE DIAGRAMING
Yep. Just like high school. Not really. But kind of?! Once my 2nd graders start becoming grammar nerds pros like me, we love to diagram and label every single word and part of our sentence! The white boards are such a great way to do that. You can do this whole group, small group, or even train them to do this with a partner or by themselves! Easy peasy!
4. THINK TIME TASKS
It’s a DUH status of common knowledge that none of our students finish ANYTHING at the same time. Right? Especially their thoughts. I have some excitable students who love to just shout, chant, share, say all the answers for all the things all day long. I can’t hate on that enthusiasm, BUT a lot of my learners need a lot more time to THINK!
So this tip/activitiy is less of an activity than it is a strategy or a GIFT for your not so quick thinking kiddos. When you’re teaching, and those same five hands are answering all the questions for all the kids, bust out the dry erase boards. I can’t tell you the CONFIDENCE that I see nearly instantaneously in my not so quick thinking kiddos. That dry erase board gives them the permission to slow their thinking and to (yay!) share their answers, too!
5. SNOWBALL SENTENCES
Step one. Give all students a post it.
Step two. Students write a sight word/vocab word/spelling word on a post-it.
Step three. Students crumple up post-it (there’s your snowball)
Step four. Students have a “snowball” fight and throw post its at each other.
Step five. Before teacher sanity is lost, teacher should give students a countdown of sorts to pick up a snowball.
Step six. Students take snowball to seat and write a sentence with the word from their snowball.
Step seven. Repeat.
6. SENTENCE SWAPS
Doesn’t every child love to quiz the teacher? They also love to quiz each other. Using their sight words, vocab words, or spelling words, have kiddos find a partner, write a sentence with a _______ where the sight/vocab word should go, swap boards with a partner and solve their partner’s sentence! Repeat repeat repeat.
7. All the WORD WORK
Y’all. If students have a dry erase board, their word work stamina is approximately 538 hours long. For real. Let them be CREATIVE. I don’t ever ever ever tell my students what they have to do during “word work”. I tell them that as long as they’re practicing their words, I don’t care WHAT they’re doing! Dude. Their creativity BLOWS MY MIND. They create games, spinners, matching, puzzles, twists on games we might already play, etc. It is AWESOME to see and their engagement never ever ever fails before we rotate. Helllllo “working the whole time” EXPECTATIONS mastery! WIN!!
8. DRY ERASE RACE
I saved the best for last!! The kiddos just LOVE any type of dry erase race! The great thing is, you can do this whole group, small group, with partners, or they can even time themselves! I like to give the kids one minute to see how many times they can {fill in a task you need them to automatize here}. These tasks might include skip counting, sight word writing, listing as many nouns/verbs/etc as they can, ETC! The possibilities are endless. I like to see who has the highest number of _____ when the timer stops. Then we erase and repeat! The timer adds instant motivation, engagement, urgency, and excitement, too!
Also, your kids would also most definitely LOVE to get their hands on the BRAND NEW INK INDICATOR EXPO MARKERS for the dry erase race! Who wants to run out of ink mid-race?!
NOPE! NOT THIS GIRL!
Er, I mean, not my students!!
These INK INDICATOR EXPO MARKERS are now available in six different colors that you can see below! What color do you think your kiddos would love the best? Black, red, blue, purple, light green, or dark green?!
I hope you and your students love one or more of these dry erase board activities as much as my students and I do! I’d love to hear from you in the comments which one was your favorite if you give them a try!
Snag the image below to pin for later, too!
A huge thanks goes out to EXPO for sponsoring this post! I received compensation and/or free product from EXPO for this post; However, the opinions in this post are 100% my own.
