Glow Day: How to Make the Final Day of Test Prep a Memorable One! (EP 32)

Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of Elementary Math Chat!

This is the third episode in our test prep series, and it is the one I have been looking forward to the most. If you’ve listened to the last few episodes, you know what I’m talking about. I’m going to give you all the details behind our Glow Day Games.

I know there’s a good chance that some of you listening have already done a Glow Day with your students. It has become pretty popular over the years. But I also think there’s value in listening to the way that someone else does something. You might hear about a game that you like better that you want to try. You might hear an idea for the way I set things up. So, even if you have done a Glow Day, I think you’ll learn a few things in this episode.

I mentioned last week that Glow Day was something they knew about from the beginning of that week, and they were fully aware that they had to earn Glow Day. They earned it in two different ways. Number one is through the activity board I mentioned last week, and number two was their behavior. If those two areas did not meet my expectations, then they would not participate.

I think the fear of missing out really did motivate them because I never had a single student who didn’t earn it. So, holding that over their heads really worked.

I will go into specifics with the games and how I set them up and all the decorations. But, I first want to talk about something a little more important, and that is what kind of work my students did on this day. 

This was the hardest part for me to decide on because I wanted it to be a really good review. I mean, this was the very last day of our test prep week. But I also knew it was Friday. It was Glow Day. They were excited, and so in the end, I feel like I found a really good balance between work and play. So, here’s what that looked like.

Each student had their own Glow Day packet, and it really was a problem-solving packet, but it was much more fun to call it a Glow Day packet. So, that’s what we call it.

This packet is from the TPT seller, One Stop Teacher Shop, and I will link this packet in the show notes for you. It was perfect for our last day of review because each page of this packet covered a different topic, and they were all word problems. So, one page was on fractions. One was on multiplication. One was division. One had multi-step word problems. You name it, it was covered in this packet.

We ended up just choosing six pages to put in this packet, and there were five questions on each page. So, that was a total of 30 questions that they had to complete. I was so relieved when I found this packet, because then everything else fell into place, and I was finally able to visualize how I could find that balance of work and play without it being overwhelming.

We first decided that they were going to work on this packet individually. So, they weren’t working in a group. They were all on their own. There was a team element to this, and I’ll get to that in a minute. But it was important to me that they did this review packet on their own because sometimes when you pair students up, or worse if you put them in a group of three or four, one person or two people end up doing all the work. I did not want that happening on our last review day.

The other part that made this manageable was they only completed one page at a time, and here’s how we incorporated the games into all of this.

Whenever they finished a page, they came to me to get it checked, and if they had at least four out of five correct, they could take their turn at the games. If not, I circled the questions they missed and they had to go back and fix them before they could play the games. So, I made him work for it.

Now as far as the games go, they did have different point values depending on their difficulty. So, some were five, some more 10, some were 15, and these points went toward their team’s total. It’s funny because when they start out, they of course want to go for the higher point values. But I think in the end, they realize that it’s probably better just to go for the easier ones and get more points for their team.

In the end, when they had all finished their packets, the team with the most points was crowned the Glow Day Games Champions. So, that gives you an overall idea of how everything worked together. 

The reason I think this all worked out so well is because they were working individually on their packet, so they were doing all the work on their own. But they were earning points for their team. So, their team was really relying on them to get their work done and try to earn points because everybody wanted to win at the end of the day.

And you know, the biggest shock I had the first year I did this was how quiet it was, and I think a lot of that is because they’re working on their own. They’re not talking with others. They’re also working on a lot of word problems, and those just require more focus and concentration the way it is.

Another shock was how well-behaved they were. I kind of thought this might be chaotic, but it was not at all. I never had a single issue with behavior. So, if you’re a little hesitant because of that, you might be surprised at how well-behaved they’ll be.

So, let’s move on and talk about the setup. This part is really important because you want to make sure that games don’t interfere with them getting their work done.

Everything I’m about to mention from the black lights to the decorations that I used will all be linked in the show notes. And remember, that’s the link in your show description. So, if you click on that, it’ll take you to my website, and you’ll also find a few pictures of my classroom on Glow Day. That might help you if you have a hard time visualizing some of the things I’m about to share.

For the setup, there are just a couple of things that you have to have. First of all, you need to make sure you black out any of your windows and doors, and I just use black chart paper from our workroom. That works really well because it’s actually pretty thick.

The other thing I did was put the tables around the perimeter of the room, and I had to do that because they needed to be near the black lights, and they were plugged into the walls. The games were then set up in the middle of the room. So, the tables were on the outside and the games were on the inside.

So, those really are the basics. You’ve got to have black lights, you’ve got to have your room dark, and you need to make sure you position your tables or your chairs around the perimeter of the room and then your games on the inside.

The other thing that you’ll need to set up are the materials that go on their tables. So, for my students, they each had their own Glow Day packet. They each had a highlighter, and it is really neat to see how the highlighters glow under black light. I do recommend yellow. It seems to work the best. Plus it’s the most popular color, so that’s the one I always used. They also had extra scratch paper and a large sheet of paper for their team scoreboard.

By the way, I did not do this on my own. I had my kids help me the day before get all of the materials passed out. They helped me move the tables and move the chairs. It probably took maybe 5 to 10 minutes at the end of the day. The only thing I didn’t let them help me set up were the games. I kind of wanted that to be a surprise.

So, leave a little time at the end of the day and let your students help you with this part of the setup.

All right let’s move on to decor. This was one of my favorite parts about Glow Day, but it can get a little pricey, especially if this is your first time and you are starting from scratch. If that’s the case, then make sure you reach out to your parent group. Because I know for me, I got a lot of this donated, and I bet if you put it in your newsletter, or just send a quick email and let them know about Glow Day, you might get everything you need donated. At least if you could get the black lights because those are the most expensive part of this.

So, like I mentioned, I had black lights that were spread out around the room. I had six total. I do recommend at least four. That’s probably the minimum you need. But I also put black light strips on the floor. These are strips of LED lights, and they help light up the games that are on the floor. You can put these on your cabinets too. One of my teammates did that, but I just kept them on the floor.

If you are on a tight budget, then that’s really all you need. But I will warn you, the more you do this, the more decorations you’re going to want to put up. So, if you’re like me, and you want to do a little extra decorating, I will link the neon party supply kit that I bought. It’s only $12.99 on Amazon, and it’s a really good deal for what you get.

It comes with glow-in-the-dark garland that you can hang up. It also has six different colors of glow-in-the-dark tape, and I needed that because that’s how I set up some of my games, and then I added a little extra decor around the room with the tape as well. So, that neon party supply kit took care of all of my decorations.

The final decoration was actually what they wore. We had parents donate glow necklaces and glow bracelets. So, each student had their own necklace and their own bracelet. A couple of the necklaces were used in the games, so you want to make sure you have some of these.

Speaking of games, let’s talk about the games. The three games we played were ring toss, beanbag toss, and ball toss.

For the ring toss, you’ll need three 2-liter bottles, at least that’s what I used and you’ll want to put them in a row along with a few glow necklaces to use as rings. I even filled the 2-liter bottles with glow-in-the-dark food coloring and water to really make them glow in the dark.

Then behind each bottle, I propped up a mini flashlight with a bookend, and this made the bottle a little easier to see when I turned the flashlight on. The closest bottle was worth five points, the middle was worth 10, and the furthest away was worth 15 points. You can either just use a sharpie and write that on the bottles, or actually what worked better was to print the numbers 5, 10, and 15 on white paper since white really stands out, and then glue it on the front of the 2-liter.

The last thing I did for this station was to use neon tape to mark where they had to stand, and that was it. That was easy.

The second game was a beanbag toss, and for this one, I used the glow-in-the-dark tape to make different shapes on the floor. The more challenging shapes to land on were labeled with 10 and 15 points, and then the easier shapes to land on were labeled with five. 

You’ll see in my pictures that mine were all connected in one space, but I would do this differently if I did it again. I would instead make separate shapes that were spread out instead of connected. I think it’s just a little bit more fun that way. So, that one is super easy to set up.

And then the third game was a ball toss. We already had these small white buckets in our science kit, and they were perfect since white glows best under the blacklight. This was a similar setup to the ring toss. The closest bucket was worth five points. The middle was worth 10, and the furthest away was worth 15.

Really the only other thing you need is a ball to use for this, and we used the mini basketballs that come with the hoops that hang over the doors. I do not recommend ping pong balls. I did that one year and they went everywhere, and they made a lot of noise. So, I’m sure your students have mini basketballs at home that they can bring in if you don’t have any.

Make sure you also mark where they stand before they throw the ball, and you can use that neon tape that comes in the kit.

I did have one bonus game for early finishers, and it was tic tac toe. So, I took the glow-in-the-dark tape and made several Tic Tac Toe games on the whiteboard. That way, if they finished early and they still wanted to play some games, they could find a partner and play tic tac toe.

So, as you can see, they are still doing a lot of work, they’re having a lot of fun, and they’re creating some really special memories. I think my favorite part of this day was seeing the excitement in their eyes when they finally got enough questions right to get to go play the games. I also loved that they were part of a team, but they were also working individually. Even if their team didn’t win, they still had a ton of fun on this day. So, I hope I’ve convinced you to give Glow Day a try.

Next week, we will wrap up this test prep series with an episode on what to do the day after testing. That can be a tough day to plan for, so I’ll share a few ideas to help you get back in the swing of things while still giving everyone a much-needed break.

But before I let you go, let’s get to today’s Teaching Tip of the Week.

I have one final tip that I want to share with you related to Glow Day, and this one is a video that I recommend you play during your Glow Day.

The title of the video is Splendor of Color Kaleidoscope Video, and I will have this linked in the show notes. It is a YouTube video, and it is so soothing. There is this soft meditation music playing during the video, and it also shows these really colorful and unique patterns of bright colors that truly do look like a kaleidoscope. I think this is the final touch to give your class the ultimate Glow Day experience.

Well, friends, that is all for today. I hope to see you back here next Tuesday for the final episode of our test prep series. Until then, have a great week.