Teaching Tip Tuesday: Snowball Fight with Crumpled Pieces of Paper

“Snowball Fighting” Technique

The snowball technique, the snowball fight strategy, or whatever you want to call it is an instructional strategy that students love. It can be changed up to fit your classroom needs, too. The idea is to get out a notebook piece of paper, and then write a comment or question. Crumple the piece of paper up and have a snowball fight. Then pick up any piece of crumpled paper up, and open it and respond to the comment or question. If you don’t want the students to throw crumpled pieces of paper at each other, then have the students throw the crumpled paper to the middle of the circle. Then students can choose a different piece of paper to pick up.

How can you do this in your classroom?

• Write a quote from a story you just read on pieces of paper. Crumple the papers up, and let your students have a snowball paper fight. Then have them pick up a crumpled piece and respond to the quote- why is it significant, what is important about it, and how does this quote contribute to the overall theme of the story?
• Have students write one thing that annoys them. Have a snowball fight, and then students can pick up a crumpled piece of paper and come up with a solution for the annoying thing.
• Write one equation on each piece of paper. Crumple the papers up and have the snowball fight. Whatever paper the student picks up, they must solve that equation. Have another fight, and this time someone else picks up the equation to see if it is solved correctly. Check this link out to learn more about how it is used in a math class here.
• Discovery Education suggests having students write one fact from the movie they just watched in class. Then crumple it up for a snowball fight. After the fight, the student who picks up the paper must add a comment relating to the fact that was written above. This can continue on until there are three or four comments written for each fact.

The great thing about this technique is you can use it any subject. Take your lesson, and make it into an engaging Snowball Fight.”