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Broken-Heart
Matching Game

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Subjects

  • Arts & Humanities
    --Language Arts
    --Literature
  • Mathematics
  • Science
  • Social Studies

Grade

  • Pre K
  • K-2
  • 3-5
  • 6-8
  • 9-12

Brief Description

Reinforce many skills with this Valentine's Day broken-heart matching game.

Objectives

Students

  • use this fun game to practice, reinforce, or apply a wide variety of skills.

Keywords

Game, Valentine's Day

Materials Needed

  • pink construction paper

Lesson Plan

This is a simple and fun activity that can be used around Valentine's Day. It can be used at any grade level -- yes, even high school -- to build or reinforce skills. Simply cut out paper hearts so there are half as many hearts as you have students. (Pink paper works best because writing on red paper is not so legible.) Then use random zig-zag cuts to cut each heart into two pieces. All the hearts should have distinctly different cuts. Then write on the matching heart pieces two related pieces of information. For example:

  • If you teach math, write a math problem on one half and its matching answer on another; or write a pair of equivalent fractions, one on each half.
  • If you teach language or reading, write a word on one half and its matching definition on another; or write two words that mean the same thing (synonyms) on each heart.
  • If you teach history, write the name of a president and the number the matches that president's position in the line of presidents; or match the president's name to a fact about him.
  • If you teach social studies, write the name of state on one half of the heart and its capital city on the other; or write a city name on one half of the heart and its geographic coordinates (longitude and latitude) on the other.
  • If you teach science, write the chemical symbol for an element on one half of the heart and its full name on the other; or write an inventor's name on one half of the heart and his or her invention on the other.

As you can see, this game is very easy to adapt to the subject and grade level you teach. Take advantage of the game's versatility -- and its fun -- as Valentine's Day approaches.

The rules of the game should be obvious: give each student half of a heart and see how long it takes them to find the classmate who has the matching half that will enable them to "mend" the broken heart.

Assessment

Once students have played one round of the game, you might collect and redistribute the hearts. Does the time it takes for students to find the classmate who holds their matching heart-half improve with each round?

Lesson Plan Source

EducationWorld.com

Submitted By

Gary Hopkins

National Standards

This game is very versatile. It can be used to help meet almost any standard in any subject at any grade.

See more Lesson Plans of the Day in our Lesson Plan of the Day Archive. (There you can search for lessons by subject too.)

Education World®
Copyright© 2009 Education World

Originally published 02/03/2006
Last updated 02/13/2009