Create a Small Group Vocabulary Game for Jacob's Learning Needs

Part 1 Vocabulary Game

Vocabulary Game Create a Small Group Vocabulary Game Aligned To One Or More Research?Based Strategies That Meets 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 Students 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 head band that would have a Velcro attached in front; the teacher would also have a stack of cards with Velcro attachments so that it sticks with the head band. Each card will have a word that would be stuck in a student’s head band and there would be teams. The competition would be amongst the teams and the one which would identify most words in a given period of time, 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 head band student (the detective) about what the word can be; for instance, the head band has the word “Giant” stuck in it and the student can ask one of his team member 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 question they have to ask. Like 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 in 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 go 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 4^th graders as they have heard about these words from other children book stories. Flame is something that can be described by stating fire as the synonym, wagon as an old day vehicle, terror is fear, monster is a dangerous creature and so on. For English Language Learners, the words will have 5 questions each in order 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 for special ability kid time would be considered flexible and they would be encouraged to participate.

Part 2 Rationale

Jacob is a 4^th 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 in 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 the by either providing descriptions about it to the word detective or by listening to the clues being a word detective himself. The words that are chosen are grade appropriate and mixture of both simple and moderate in difficulty to ensure that new words are learnt through each vocabulary game. Vocabulary games have become an essential tool of learning which 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 in 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 of time (Derakshan & Khatir, 2015).

Games and learning are now being mingled more than before, looking at the positive outcomes that is 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 are able to bond with other students and they 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).