Categories Inspiration, Literacy

The Price Is Right In The Classroom

Growing up a sick day from school meant one thing: The Price Is Right and Bob Barker reminding us to help control the pet population. I mean, who doesn’t love The Price Is Right? I have been thinking about bringing this experience to the classroom but wasn’t sure how until our nighbor made us a Plinko board for the classroom! Keep reading to see how we set up this classroom transformation and practiced content!

The Price Is Right Set Up

I know there is a lot of information and opinions out there on classroom transformations. In our classroom, I always want to keep things simple and real and that’s what I love about this transformation. I also believe transformations should be RARE in the classroom and not the norm. A transformation should be special and if we do them all the time it becomes just another day. We do 1-2 transformations a year.

It took me an hour of my planning time to prep and less than $20. Note: our Plinko game was built by our neighbor and the spinner wheel was a previous purchase!

We used Solo cups, poster board, masking tape, tissue paper, rubber bands and brass brads to make the Punch A Bunch game.

To make this game I traced a paper plate onto tissue paper and cut out the circles. In the bottom of each solo cup I poked a hole. Then I poked a hole in the poster board. We inserted the brass brad through the hole in the cup and the board. That secures the cup to the board. Next, I dropped in a piece of paper with a letter written on it. Finally, we placed the tissue paper over the cup and secured with a rubber band. After finishing, I realized it was flimsy so I stapled 3 pieces of poster board and that worked great!

The Content

The content for this classroom game was letters and sounds since we just finished ABC BOOTCAMP. So I wrote uppercase and lowercase letters on colored paper. The colors match the colors on the spinning wheel and Plinko. I also printed pictures for beginning sounds on the same colors. After we finished today, I placed all of these materials into a bag, labeled it Price Is Right and put it in the closet. Now we can use it next year. And here’s the beauty of this transformation: we can use it for any skills such as sight words, addition, subtraction, CVC words and more!

For The Price Is Right, you need a Contestants Row. We simply used poster board and masking tape.

And finally we had to have our official The Price Is Right name tags! I simply printed these on yellow cardstock and wrote names with a marker!

The Price Is Right: How To Play

For our transformation, we had three games: Plinko, Punch A Bunch and the big wheel. Four students were chosen to come to Contestant’s Row. I choose the four so they would have similar abilities. I showed the contestants a letter. The first one to say the letter and sound got to come on stage and choose a game to play. The remaining contestants stay on contestant’s row. We continue until all four have been on stage to play a game. Then we choose four more contestants. This continues until all students have played.

If a student chose Plinko, they dropped the puck. When the puck lands in a color at the bottom, I choose a piece of paper of that same color. I show it to the students and they identify the letter, the sound and write the letter. They also tell me words that start with the sound.

For Punch A Bunch, the punched the cup and pulled out the paper. Students identified the letter, the sound and words for the sound. They also write the letter on their dry erase board.

If they chose to spin the wheel, they simply spun the wheel. Whatever color the wheel stops in is the color of paper I pick up. Again, we identify the letter, sound and words and write the letter.