One way to increase student engagement is to incorporate task cards into your instruction. You can use task cards with centers, playing Scoot, or even use them digitally. While I love using my more traditional task cards, I’m always on the lookout for out of the box ideas to keep the task cards novel for students. This post shares five of my favorite sets of task cards that are a bit unique and a whole lot of fun!
Scavenger Hunts
You can easily incorporate task cards with scavenger hunts (print or digital). In reading students can find examples of nonfiction text features using sites such as Epic or your classroom library. They can look for examples of character traits or different points of view. In math students can find examples of various math concepts, such as numbers that round to 2,000 or particular measurements. In the Place Value Scavenger Hunt below, students use reference books to find examples of numbers with given place values or values.
You could easily adapt this scavenger hunt to work with decimals and/or fractions for older students.
QR Codes
QR codes can also increase student engagement when combined with task cards. One great way to use them is to incorporate the task cards with brief videos linked with the QR code. For example, in this set of Sports Math task cards, students can watch brief videos that highlight the sporting event mentioned. This helps bring the content to life for students.
I’m working on something now with language arts that I’m really excited about! It’s not quite ready to share, but I hope to give you some great ways to combine the two soon.
Hands-On
You can absolutely combine task cards and hands-on learning. You can use almost any math manipulative with task cards. One of my favorites is this equivalent fraction activities that helps students see the relationship between parts and wholes.
One thing you will need to note is if the shapes on the task cards are proportional to the manipulatives you plan to use. I ended up needing to make my own manipulatives for the activity above, because I wanted the sizes to be exact. You can download that activity for free here and you’ll also access the printable manipulatives that are proportional to the design.
Book Orders
Book order forms are a great way to increase student engagement! Even if no one orders books, the forms can be so useful! You could have students sort book genres using the book covers. The book blurbs can be a great starting point for teaching summaries or main idea. If you’re teaching math, you can use the cost of the books for real-life problem solving. The Book Order Math task cards can be used with any month’s book order form, so it something that can be used multiple times a year.
Menus
I love using choice boards and tic-tac-toe menus during my instruction. But, real restaurant menus are great too. When using these Restaurant Math task cards students once again apply computation and problem solving skills using restaurant menus. I haven’t yet found a great way to incorporate menus with language arts, but I’ll be on the lookout!
What are other creative ways you’ve used task cards in your classroom?
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