Tuesday, October 30, 2012

What's the Secret Word?

Found this idea on a chorister blog and it was SUCH a huge hit! Kids and teachers were talking about it days and weeks after. And what's great is it's simple to prepare and execute, the teachers are the main ones "on display" so it gives you a little break, and the kids have to SING in order for the game to work!

The sign I made to tape up onto the podium (I like signs!):

I had five teachers to come up front and sit in chairs facing the kids.
They were each given a piece of paper that I'd put together, each paper different. 
Here's an example: 

So we had five teachers sitting in chairs facing the kids.
We'd start singing one of the songs and the teachers would quickly look at their paper to know which word they were supposed to do an action for. This also tested if the teachers knew the songs! 
As you can see there are blank spots on the above example. Not every teacher had a word assigned to them for every single song because frankly it was hard to think of actions for them to do!! But it worked out; the kids couldn't necessarily remember more than a few actions/word combinations per song anyway! 

The kids did great at paying attention to what the teachers were doing, even while singing! It was a blast!

EDITED TO ADD FOUR PAGES FROM A SINGING TIME I JUST DID. You can see how each one is different, one page was given to a teacher. Four teachers total, different words and different actions. A few didn't have a word for that song since there weren't enough repeating words.





9 comments:

  1. So fun! Thank you for sharing this idea!

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  2. What a fun idea! Would you be willing to share the other pages with actions you gave to the teachers? What did you do after the song was over, did you have the kids guess what action went to which word?

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    1. Yes, I'll put up the other pages! I would say I'd attach them, but I used a funky font no one will have so the attachment would turn out all funky anyway. So yes -- if the kids and teachers don't know the songs very very well then have them sing it through once and the teachers will make note of where their word is in that song. So obviously it's better to choose songs they all know well or use it as a review for the Program. After you introduce the activity and have sung the first song, the kids will be excitedly raising their hands wanting to say what they know - some will know what a specific teacher did during a specific word but some kids will only know the action or only remember what word that teacher did an action to. The other kids will help answer what isn't answered. It's so so so fun. Then you move onto the next song and so on.

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  3. So there is more than one secret word per song? Is that right?

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    1. Yes -- if you scroll through all 4 of the papers at the end of the post you'll see each song has 3-4 words that are "secret" so you need 4 teachers total. Most teachers have one word per song. It kind of gets confusing to wrap your brain around but once you understand, it's not too bad.

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  4. Did this work with the junior primary as well?

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    1. Yes, it did! It worked really well and I was always impressed with how they knew the secret word :)

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  5. Oh. my. goodness. We did this activity today since I had the entire singing/sharing time. We laughed so hard! Junior primary did well, and Senior primary... Some kids were even taking notes ���� it was so much fun!! Thank you for the suggestion!

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