Rotten Bananas — A cooperative game

Objectives:
 recognizing sight words, target vocabulary or Dolch most common words
 Reading words
 Pronouncing words
 Create a motivating learning activity
 Provide a game a small group can play without teacher assistance

Preparation:
 Using multiple sheets of yellow construction paper, cut dozens of banana shapes.
Laminate, cut and Velcro.
 Write one sight word or target word on each banana. (write some facing each direction
to allow bananas to be opposite of each other for display)
 Using the last banana, color both sides of it brown or use brown paper. Write ‘Rotten
Banana’ on it.
 *Use a permanent marker to write the word on the laminated banana. When you
want to change the word use nail polish remover to clean the banana and write your
new word.

How to Play:
 Place all the bananas in a can, cup, or hat and begin passing it around.
 The students take turn selecting one banana from the can without looking at the words,
attempting to read the word.
 If they correctly pronounce the word, they place the word on the board (or banana
stem) If they cannot read it other students will help them.
 The game continues until one person unfortunately selects the rotten banana.
 Students yell out “Rotten Banana”
 Students count the number of bananas on the board and then begin the game again by
taking down the bananas and putting them back into the can.
 Students play again to try and beat their previous number of bananas safely on the tree.
 *You can make this a competitive game by allowing each student or team to keep their own
bananas and count them when the rotten banana is chosen. The team or person with the
most bananas becomes the winner/s.