This week I used the hoops for two different purposes. The first was to practice telling time. With just a simple clock label printable and a hoop your students can practice telling time on a white board or outside on the concrete! My students love to play a game where one student must draw a time card and reads the time to a partner, while the partner creates that time on the large hula hoop clock. This simple activity is a great time filler or independent center. I have included a free printable of clock labels and matching cards to enable you to create this game! Simply click the link below:
Finally, I used hula hoops this week to give students a concrete example of division. I have been introducing division to a group of special needs students and have already read and practiced sharing cookies along with the book The Doorbell Rang. It was evident that my students still needed some time with real, tangible examples of division to go along with the "deal it out" strategy of division. To do this I brought out the good old hula hoops again and had them create large examples of various division problems. For example, if a student drew a card that asked them to solve 15 divided by 3 they would grab 3 hula hoops and 15 sharing items (we used erasers only because I had so many of these). They would then begin dealing out the items equally into the 3 hoops to see how many each hoop would get. Students finally copied the problem and answer onto a separate sheet of paper to use as a formative assessment.
I would love to hear more of your ideas on using hula hoops, or any other objects commonly found in classrooms for unique learning opportunities!
