Help, please. Ideas for an interview activity.

[joshad]

I have an interview for a post as an individual needs assistant at a primary school. They have asked me to plan a 15 minute learning activity using a game or book, for a mixed ability group of approximately 3-4 children from Year 2 or 3. Has anyone any fantastic ideas that I could pinch please? I will not know which year I will have until I am there. Any help would be very much appreciated!

its not a fantastic idea but could you do something about verbs, nouns etc? so you could read out an extract from a book like the owl who was afraid of the dark and get them to do different things when each type of word is used (eg: starjumps for verbs, waving for nouns) - this may be better for year 3

Thanks sleepismysuperpower1. I like that idea. I'm a trained secondary teacher who has been teaching pupils with SEND, so wasn't sure where to pitch the activity. Would year 2 pupils understand what a verb/noun is? I can explain of course before...
I appreciate your help.

Bumping. Any more ideas please? TIA

im not sure if a year 2 would know what one is...i can't remember when my oldest 2 learnt. perhaps you could adapt the activity by just doing verbs as opposed to verbs, adjectives, nouns etc. i would explain what each one is before hand, even to year 3 students, but verbs are easily explained (doing words, give examples) good luck!

Year 2’s should know what a verb and a noun are, it’s covered in yr 1. You might just need to remind them

I have year 2 twins and they have covered nouns, pronouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives so definitely should be ok with that

Thank you for your replies.

If you have a separate room to do your activity, like if you can borrow the gym, how about a ring toss kind of thing, but maybe balls into buckets or beanbags into hoops instead? The children could take turns standing behind a line on the floor and throwing the beanbags/balls into the hoops/buckets. If you have 3 hoops, each one should be further away than the other and the child can choose which to aim for, but the nearest is only worth 1 point, the next 2 points and the last 5 points, as they'll know their 1x, 2x and 5x tables. You need to have enough beanbags/balls that they can each have 3 attempts (leaving them where they land) before they count up how many they've got in each hoop/bucket. 15 minutes would probably be enough time for them to play 3 or 4 rounds of the game, enough for each child to have a turn working out the total number of points from one round. They could record the results in tally charts maybe, with the figure written at the end? When the game is finished have them work out which round earned the most points and which the least. If you find you still have time to kill you could always have a bonus round at the end, maybe with another hoop or bucket a good distance away worth 10 points.

The activity is working on risk-taking, probability, gross motor skills, hand-eye co-ordination, mathematics and a bit of fine motor control with the recording of their results. Plus it's a team activity rather than a competition so promotes a bond within the group.

I did possessive plural apostrophes with a year one class last week. The world has gone mad.

I'm a teaching assistant in year 2, there is a wide range of abilities. You could do a maths bingo game. Memory games such as Kim's game works well for all abilities. Year 2 children would know what adjectives are, so you could get some objects in a bag and get the children to come up with adjectives to describe them, then as a group come up with a simile sentence for each each one? All of our year 2s would be capable of doing these activities. Good luck! Oh, and take reward stickers to give out at the end!

If you're not sure of year 2 grammar expectations/pitch, have a look at sample Y2 SATs papers online - this will give you a pretty clear overview of what they'll be learning this year.

Age appropriate texts that are used in our year 2 curriculum include The Stick Man, Room on the Broom, The Gruffalo, Diary of a Killer Cat and Tiddler.

You could put together a story sack for your chosen text, see if the children can guess the setting/story and extend to include their ideas to tell a new story using the objects you've included. Lots of speaking and listening opportunities which can be directed "who can think of some adjectives to describe the trees in the forest?"

Love the idea of beanbags FurrySlipperBoots. I am not sure what space I am going to be in. I think I need to contact the school for clarification. They gave few details!
EatToTheBeet, indeed the world has gone potty.
83maddog83, yes reward stickers are a must! Good reminder :)
1sttimeDD - I have been looking at year 2 and 3 resources online and now have some idea... A story sack may be the ticket.

Thank you all. You have been most helpful!

What about an old roll of wall paper with a large number line on the back that they could take in turn to walk up and down as another child calls out a sum? You could then ask what would happen if you went the other way from zero and unroll the negative numbers for them to do say 2-5.