General

Using a magnetic dart board so they determine what score they get for answering questions on a topic.

Deeley boppers/flashing bunny ears - great for doing alien impressions, ie 'tell me earthling, describe this thing you call metal or be disintegrated...ah you say it's heavy - so this wooden table is metal..no you lie DIE SCREAMING CHILD (make raygun sound).

I agree, puppets are wonderful, to pontificate for a moment, I think a big advantage of them is that you can use them to speak to a pupil with a different 'voice/manner' than you usually would. I've seen a puppet used with 'difficult to control pupils' telling them to 'shutup and listen noodlebrain' (whether this is right or not is another manner) - where if the teacher had 'really' said that the kid would be outraged. There is immense amounts of fun to be had with having a hand puppet looking at pupils work and talking to them about its quality (some shy pupils respond better this way than talking directly to the teacher), another favourite is to let the puppet mock whisper into your ear, 'oh no (puppets name) I couldn't do that to them...' rarely fails to get a giggle.
Like everything else - you pick your times, classes and individual kids, but it can be a fun part of a teachers reportoire

Paint one wall/board or my room with magnetic paint - then think of things to do with it!

Tried miming things today ('cos I'm losing my voice)..as in 'Ok I'm going to mime some things to do with forces - you call out words to do with forces that would describe what I am doing ' Worked well
Tomorrow they get to mime to a partner (or a group (I'll probably do it as charades)

Now if i want their attention I start singing and continue until they beg me to stop....down to 3 seconds now - have my very own kareoke machine in the lab - last person in to class also has to give us a tune every now and then.

Far Side cartoons and similar - love 'em. I've used them as 'what's wrong with this picture' creativity type starter questions . Or just as amusing pictures to put around the lab - on that vein, one thing I did for a while which caused amusement was start putting small pictures/laminated quotes etc on unusual places in the lab - ie the ceiling, underneath desks and stools. Normally caused some amusement when they were found - and we did a few lessons where I refered pupils to a piece of information that they had to find first (If you see what I mean).

ust had this idea - digital camera, take pics of students doing activity/ prac whatever, then as starter for next lesson put them up on screen and do a caption competition.

A boys only class being allowed to arm wrestle over a discussion (humanities class but would work in Science) - as each boy made a pont the arm wrestle went one notch their way - five points won the match.

I also have 2 blow up cubes with questions on them - one is very much 'what have you found out after reading this' and the other is 'what have you found out after doing this' but they are quite fun.

Multiple choice questions are livened up by putting them in a 'Banzai' type framework - I have powerpoint presentations which include the music, some of the characters and 'Place bets now', they go down a treat!

to learn equations; with a difficult Year 11 class, I took music (cheesy 70's and 80's disco mostly) in, and wrote the equations on the board. They had one song (YMCA)to teach the person next to them the equation. Then, I asked them to look under their seats. I'd stuck the words for the equation under the seats (eg glucose under one, oxygen under another). Some kids are 'arrangers' (those with no word under their seat. The arrangers put the kids with the words in the right places. This worked well for aerobic and anaerobic respiration. The arranging is done to some funky toooones (oooh Mickey you're so fine etc) and is timed. When the equations are correct, timer stopped and kids go back to places. Swap over words, do it again. 2 or 3 times... how fast can they do it? 8 seconds from a sitting start was the record. They LOVED it! And this was my nightmare class....

3d display work:
pupils: mobiles, cells, information cubes
teacher: don't limit yourself to posters: hang a bike from the wall (pick one up from scrap yard, get caretaker to put a couple of big hooks up, use cable ties to make bike inoperable and secure to hooks - use a bike lock if you're worried about it being stolen. Broken hairdryer - rip it apart and mount the pieces on a piece of hardboard add labels. Get some pupils to make a 3d life-size body similar to dimensional man - good sci club activity. Decorate a big box with nice paper and label "Box of Wonder". Put interesting things in it - pet mouse is a good one.