Have you noticed these days that kids love a good ‘challenge’? They’ll do anything with excitement if you add the word ‘challenge’ to it! So when I can, I like to make learning games into challenges for my students. This Beat The Clock game is exactly that. Engaging, exciting, high energy, quick learning and so much fun.
Beat The Clock Game
Fluency is something that we work towards in kindergarten. Fluency of a variety of different skills: Number ID, addition sentences, CVC words, sight words, simple sentences, upper and lowercase letters, beginning sounds, number order, etc. The list can go on and on. We want our students to not only master the skill but increase the rate of speed, fluency, as well.
This Beat The Clock game can be used to help increase fluency in all of the skills listed above, and more. This high energy challenge helps motivate students to want to strengthen and master the skills.
Another way that this kindergarten game is versatile is who can play it. You can use this as a whole group activity, small group, partners, or independent. It is literally all encompassing.
Materials Needed
Sentence Strips
Pocket Chart
Pointer
Sand Timer
Prepping
This fluency game is incredibly easy to prep.
There is nothing to print, nothing to cut or laminate.
Once you have determined the skill that is going to be focused on, you can get your sentence strips ready. If you already have sentence strips prepped, those will work perfect. If not, write the sentences, letters, words, numbers, etc that you would like the students to read. Place them in the pocket chart as normal.
Grab your sand timer and pointer and let’s get playing.
How To Play Beat The Clock
As mentioned above, the purpose of this is fluency. We want students to get faster at the particular skill, and encouraging them with the ‘challenge’ aspect is helpful with this. So once everything is set up, students can grab the pointer (it makes them feel extra important, doesn’t it). Once the timer starts, they will point to the items as they read and speak it out loud. They will inevitably want to beat their record, so we usually went two times in a row per child.
Do you want more intentional and purposeful games for your little learners? Check out post “Versatile Learning Games Your Kindergarteners Will Love“.
I loved the sound of the Beat the Clock game. I may start teaching again next year and this is a great idea for teaching all kinds of things. Thanks.
Thank you! Good luck to you!
Love this idea! What do you do if the child misses the concept? I tend to overthink everything 🤣Do they keep trying and if they don’t get it, they lose? Do you do points, etc? Or like they got 4/5…who can beat them and the clock kind of thing? Thanks so much!
I had my students do this for another fun way to practice their literacy skills. There is no “correct” way. Do what fits for you and your students. Thanks for the comment.