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Part 1 Vocabulary Game
Vocabulary Game Create a Small Group Vocabulary Game Aligned To One Or More Research. Based Strategies That Meet Jacob’s Needs.
How To Expand The Game To Include Higher? Level Thinking.
How Does The Vocabulary Game Implement One Or More Research? Based Strategy To Support Student’s Vocabulary Development?
How Does The Game Help To Engage And Motivate The Students? How Does The Game Help Jacob Achieve His Learning Goal? Support Your Findings With 2?
The game is known as “What’s the Word Detective?” where the teacher will make a headband that has a Velcro attached in front; the teacher will also have a stack of cards with Velcro attachments so that it sticks with the headband. Each card will have a word that will be stuck in a student’s headband and there will be teams. The competition would be amongst the teams and the one which would identify most words in a given period would win the game. The game works by calling a student of a team who will wear a headband and have a word from the story The One-Eyed Giant written by Mary Pope Osborne. The other team members of the student will be questioned by the headband student (the detective) about what the word can be; for instance, the headband has the word “Giant” stuck in it and the student can ask one of his team members the question like “what is the synonym/ the other name for my word?”. The students will get a clue before going to their team members so that they know what questions they have to ask. For the “wagon,” the teacher would give a clue “It is an ancient day object”. The team member would have to answer the question correctly without speaking out the actual word and the detective has to guess the correct word. If any student utters the actual word written on the card, the word will be disqualified and they will lose time. There will be three teams and each word will get three questions or else the word will be forfeited.
The words that can be incorporated from the story are “giant”, “wagon”, “monster”, “pirate”, “stranger”, “terror”, “flame”, “capture”, “creature” and “trap”. These words are appropriate for 4th graders as they have heard about these words from other children’s book stories. Flame is something that can be described by stating fire as the synonym, wagon as an old-day vehicle, terror as fear, monster as a dangerous creature, and so on. For English Language Learners, the words will have 5 questions each for them to identify, and for a kid with special ability, the teacher would assist at the time of confrontation to make them understand the clues. Also, the special ability kids’ time would be considered flexible and they would be encouraged to participate.
Part 2 Rationale
Jacob is a 4th grader who has trouble with new words; the reason is a lack of vocabulary. In these cases, the student is recommended to read aloud books both in and out of the curriculum. This vocabulary game would engage Jacob in a fun act of learning new words and also how to pronounce them. The game has been structured in such a way that the student would get to learn about the new words in any way regardless if they win or lose. The sense of competition with other teams would give them the motivation and the encouragement to do better and thriving in a healthy competition would be engaging for the students. Jacob has problems learning new words and this game would help him learn about new words through a fun activity, where he would be able to learn about them by either providing descriptions about the word detective or by listening to the clues being a word detective himself. The words that are chosen are grade-appropriate and a mixture of both simple and moderate difficulty to ensure that new words are learned through each vocabulary game. Vocabulary games have become an essential tool of learning that is effective for the fun and engaging activities that the students get to have (Huyen & Nga, 2003). Games are something that children are always interested in, and when learning is incorporated into the games, it becomes easier to teach the students. Also, it has been observed through several studies that, when children learn something through practical activities, games, or even audio-visual methods, they tend to remember the class for a long period (Derakshan & Khatir, 2015).
Games and learning are now being mingled more than before, looking at the positive outcomes that are portrayed through the changes in the students (Al Neyadi, 2007). Also, for students with special abilities and learners who are ELLs, these games become the medium through which they can bond with other students and feel included in the classroom.
References
Al Neyadi, O. S. (2007). The effects of using games to reinforce vocabulary learning.
Derakhshan, A., & Khatir, E. D. (2015). The effects of using games on English vocabulary learning. Journal of Applied Linguistics and Language Research, 2(3), 39-47.
Huyen, N. T. T., & Nga, K. T. T. (2003). Learning vocabulary through games. Asian EFL Journal, 5(4), 90-105.
Osborne, M. P., & Howell, T. (2002). The one-eyed giant (Book one of tales from the Odyssey). New York: Disney Hyperion.
Schutz, D. (2011). The Common Core State Standards for English language arts & literacy in history/social studies, science, and technical subjects: An Analysis and an Alternative. Social Studies, Science, and Technical Subjects: An Analysis and an Alternative (December 24, 2011).