I love Scavenger Hunts!

Since finding the WONDERFUL site Teachers Pay Teachers I have downloaded several items that I LOVE. I must say one of my very favorite items to use in the classroom is a scavenger hunt. Normally, these would be the topics that it would take just that extra day of practice for my students to fully grasp and I would use a normal worksheet and walk around helping students as they needed it. I may have gotten a little more creative and put them in groups or done some sort of gallery wall where each group work out a problem on big paper on the wall and then explained it to the rest of the class. However, I never found these days terribly engaging for the students but I was always exhausted.

At the beginning of this year I found scavenger hunts and tried one outside on a nice day. They were an instant hit! All the students loved going outside in math class and I found that they all stayed engaged the entire time. Even more than that, the students HAD to get the correct answer or they couldn't go forward. Students were helping other students, but not giving them answers because it became a sort of competition, something I hadn't planned for at all. I walked around scaffolding as needed and soaking up some much needed sun on one of our last nice days.

We used "make shift" clip boards out of old folders (the ones I dug out of the trash the year before from students that threw away perfectly good plastic folders) and alligator clips to hold the students paper and give them something to write on. I spent a little bit of prep time laminating the cards so that I can reuse the same cards or posters every year instead of wasting ink. This is a good idea especially when you are printing them in color, and it stops students from writing on them.

So, since the very first scavenger hunt I have downloaded several more and found this to be a very beneficial part of my curriculum. Lately I have even started making my own. Unfortunately, it is not so nice outside anymore so our scavenger hunts have remained in the classroom for the last few months, but I get very creative with where I hide the signs. Students really have to "hunt" all over my room to find their next problem. It is not unusual at all to see students laying on their backs under tables working math problems.

Visit my store on Teachers Pay Teachers and download a free scavenger hunt on Slope and Rate of Change to try in your classroom. I hope your students like it as much as mine do.