Team work and cooperation in the classroom

Let me give you an update on activities I tried this year in my lessons.

English Reading Club seems to be accepted well with my pupils. We have read more books, made a shopping list for new, made notes in our learning diary, joined some eTwinning projects etc. Fast finishers´ corner seems to be working only when I take some time to encourage pupils to do it. They are not particulary interested in it and I guess it is because I see my pupils only twice a week for 45 mins. 

So..I have been working on some other topics during the past few months and at the moment I am making connections and sorting the activities. 

My Reading Club members have many ideas but my fast finishers´s corner will be modified. Pupils like the idea but there were too many tasks and they did them superficially. Also, they don´t get the idea of working in their free time. They work only if that is their homework. 

Therefore my corner will have less tasks and they will be vocabulary tasks and entrepreneurship tasks. Also, a very important change, all the tasks will be done in one class map. Pupils will do the drawing tasks and name tasks on their own and stick them on the poster. The Snake game and the Dollar words game will be played on one class poster so that it is always displayed, monitored and encourages others to join in. Cooperation and team work are the key words this year as long term goals. 

Lower grades will have one common taks: create a class list of rhyming words. The list will be used in some other activities in the following months. 
2nd grade: invent something that would help Olaf survive during summer. Draw and label. / write as many words as you can starting with M/T/S/P. 
3rd grade: change your name so that the first letter of your name is an activity and the first letter of your surname is clothes. / Play the Snake game (last letter of the word is the first letter of a new one). 
4th grade: change your name so that the first letter of your name is an adjective and the first letter of your surname is an animal. / Play the Dollar words game. 

Higher grades will have some stories to finish off and some Internet searching tasks. I will keep you updated on this too.