Academic Language Word Games

Subject Area and Grade Span: Any Subject, Grades K-12

What it is:

This practice supports listening and speaking and can be used to launch into a writing activity. This type of game playing is based on the premise that students begin their understanding of difficult concepts and academic language through descriptions and characteristics. The purpose of the practice is to use word games to engage students to play with language. This word game is easy to implement in the classroom and can be modified by increasing the difficulty of words or explicitly teaching them with a focus on academic language. This works great as a sponge activity or can be used as a pre, during, or post activity throughout vocabulary instruction. Through this fun-spirited activity, students learn from each other and build knowledge, comprehension, and fluency skills.

What it looks like:

• Engage students as a whole class.
• Pose a question using the stem, Name as many things you can think of that can ________? (See examples below). Ideas to fill in the blank are numerous.
• Have students work with a partner or in table groups to generate their lists.
• Students should read their lists aloud to the class when called upon. (Other group members should listen to responses and add other answers that haven’t yet been recorded.)

Examples: 

List five things that can fly or can be propelled through the air.
Possible answers may include, airplane, bullet, arrow, and kite. 
Other stem starters for this activity include, but are not limited to:

List five things…

• You use in a classroom
• You find on the playground
• You see on a webpage
• You take to the beach
• You see in a museum
• You find in the library

The ideas above will familiarize students with the strategy and then you can try more complex, content-based stems for use as launching points into instruction. Consider ideas such as: 

• Identifying abstract shapes
• Naming 16^th century thinkers
• Listing the elements of writing
• Listing synonyms for the word citizen
• Identifying major principles in the U.S. Constitution
• Listing healthy food choices
• Words that end in –tion

How you know it’s working:

• This activity serves as an effective strategy for “firing neurons” and getting students to think.
• Students get highly engaged in this activity and will ask to play again.

Things to consider:

• Use a timer to monitor time. Making it a race against time adds an element of competition and urges students to make the best use of time to focus on the task at hand.
• Focus on academic content by selecting words that students will encounter in their upcoming unit of study. To add another dimension of difficulty, have students report on themes. For example, in history, have students provide examples of struggle and strife, encounter and exchange, or people who have taken a stand in history.

References:

Cunningham, P. M. (1998). Month-by-month phonics for upper grades, Greensboro, NC: Carson-Dellosa Publishing.