Games are an effective way to teach, not just younger elementary students, but older elementarystudents as well. Games can help foster greater comprehension of subject matter material, as childrenare more apt to relate to the material since it is being taught in a fun way. Games can be used to teachnew material or can be used to reinforce and review material.

Guess What I'm Thinking
In this game, students guess what you are thinking from clues that you have provided them. It is anideal way to reinforce topics and ideas that have already been taught. For example, you may state, "Iam thinking of someone who was president during one of the World Wars and was elected presidentfour times." If a student thinks he knows whom you are thinking of, he would raise his hand and sharehis guess. If he is correct, he would earn a point, if he is incorrect, the remaining students have anopportunity to guess. If students can't guess whom you are thinking of, provide them with more clues.The student with the most points at the end of the game wins.

Math Trivia
Upper primary students will enjoy reviewing math facts with this game. Place students into pairs. On anoverhead projector, write a math problem. Have students solve the problem on a piece of paper. Thefirst team to solve the problem raises their hands and shares the answer, as well as how thedetermined the answer they came to. If the pair is correct, the pair earns a point; if they are incorrect,another team may try to answer the question. If students are having difficulty finding the correctanswer, take the opportunity to re-teach them.

Hangman
This game is an age-old favorite that remains popular today. This game can be used in classroominstruction to teach and review spelling words. Divide your class into two teams. On the board, draw anamount of spaces that corresponds to the number of letters in a word that you want children to spell.Flip a coin to determine which team begins the game. The team that begins the game guesses a letter.If the letter is in the word, write the letter in the space it belongs. If the letter that is guessed is not in theword, draw a part of a man being hanged--starting with the head--and write the miss-guessed letter onthe board so that it will not be guessed again. Continue playing until either the word has beendetermined or there is a completed hangman. If a completed hangman is drawn, tell kids what theintended word was and start a new game. If the word has been determined, the team that figured it outearns a point. The team with the most points wins.