Cooperative Learning #8 & Match It Flash Freebie!

I am so excited to be sharing another Kagan cooperative learning structure with you today! This one is called Match Mine. It reminds me of the game "Telephone" that I played as a kid. Below is a picture of some of my kinderkids engaged in Barnyard Friends. I prepared this game from Kagan's book, Match Mine: Language Builder. To play, I prepared the boards and pieces by color coding and laminating them. I only needed 10 sets, since 2 children played the game at a time. Partner A places his pieces on the board in any order. Partner B waits without peeking! Next Partner A uses verbal cues to tell Partner B to put the pieces on his board. Partner A uses directional words such as top, bottom, above, below, next to, left, right, in the middle, etc. Partner B listens and puts the pieces on his mat. When they are done, they check their board to see if they are alike. If so, they cheer. Then they switch roles and play again. In the picture below, my students used farm animal pictures to place in the 9 boxes.

The Barnyard set is at school. However, I am prepping some more games from that particular Kagan book. I plan to put these at literacy or math centers after my students have had practice playing the game with my guidance. Click HERE to see where to buy the book. Here is a picture that I took to show you some of the pages inside. It's a great resource! This structure is great for language building. It hits these Kindergarten Common Core standards:

1. SL.K.3: Ask and answer questions in order to seek help, get information, or clarify something  that is not understood.
2. K.G.1: Describe objects in the environment using names of shapes, and describe the relative positions of these objects using terms such as above, below, beside, in front of, behind, and next to.
3. Florida SS Skill- SS.K.G.1.1: Describe the relative location of people, places, and things by using positional words.

I could see adapting this for older grades with vocabulary. One partner has the words, while the other has the definition. I think math could easily be adapted to this structure as well!

I do not use this strategy at the beginning of the kindergarten school year. I feel that most of my students aren't quite ready for it. Kagan's version is a bit more advanced. There are great examples that can be used after the first months, but during the first months I prefer something simpler. So I created my own version to use during the first months of kindergarten. It focuses on letter and number recognition, and also includes color, shape, and names of classmates. I am offering it as a FLASH FREEBIE at my TPT store for the first ten individuals who would like it! Offer expired.




Click the picture to go to my TPT store to check it out.

Next week is my last week of summer, and so it will also be my last week of my Thursday's Cooperative Learning Linky. Feel free to link up any cooperative learning strategy you would like to share. If you don't have a blog, you can comment or ask questions in the comment section. I would love to read your thoughts about cooperative learning structures!