Learning new words doesn’t need to be boring. It can be an opportunity to develop your students’ creative thinking and have fun. Here is an awesome way to gamify teaching literacy while enhancing your students thinking.
This is how it goes-
1. Introduce to your students a new word – only say the word without sharing its meaning. (Write it on the whiteboard as well)
2. Ask them to make up their own definition for the word and write their definition on a piece of paper. (Everyone should use the same pieces of paper, so they can’t identify who wrote it based on the colour or shape of the piece of paper. You can use post-it notes for this purpose) Ask your students to make their definitions sound as realistic and as accurate as possible as if their definition was taken from a dictionary. Instruct them not to share their definition with anyone.
3. While they are writing their own definition, you should write down the word's actual definition on a similar piece of paper.
4. Once everyone has finished writing their definitions, choose four students. Ask these four students to give you their pieces of paper with their definitions.
5. Replace one of their pieces of paper with yours – with the actual definition of the word. Then give each one of them one of the four pieces of paper. (They won’t necessarily receive their own piece of paper)
6. They will need to read the definition from the piece of paper they are holding to the class.
7. Ask your students to vote on the definition they think is the correct one.
8. Once they finish voting, read the correct definition for the word. Each student who guessed correctly will receive one point.
9. Repeat this process with other new and challenging words.
You can expand this activity by choosing or voting on the most creative definition.
Get in touch and let me know what other areas/lessons you want to turn into a fun game-
Komentari