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If you're looking for a game that students will beg to play every week, this is it. I've used it in classrooms and academic enrichment programs at summer camp with fantastic results. Add this to Bug and The Mysterious Box of Mystery, and you have three solid sure-fire games for your ELA toolbox.

Big Words is an activity which promotes an increase in phonetic awareness, spelling accuracy, and vocabulary development. The game I describe below was inspired by authors Patricia M. Cunningham and Dorothy P. Hall in their book Making Big Words. The copy I purchased over ten years ago encouraged me to turn their ideas into a class-wide game which has been a huge hit ever since.

The first objective of the game is to create as many words as possible from a given set of letters. To play, each student is given an envelope containing a strip of letters in alphabetical order, vowels listed first and then consonants. The student cuts these apart so that the individual letters can be easily manipulated on the desktop. Moving the letters about, students attempt to form as many words as possible. Beginners may only be able to form two-, three-, and four-letter words, but with time and practice will be able to use knowledge of word parts and blends to form much longer words.

The second objective is to spell a single word (the Big Word!) with all the letters. In my class, that Big Word very often relates to an upcoming trip, project, or special event, and thus serves double-duty to build excitement and enthusiasm.

As Big Words is used on a regular basis, the teacher can discuss strategies for increasing word counts. Some of these strategies include rhyming, changing single letters at the beginning or ending of each word, using blends, homophones, etc. Many additional words can also be generated through the use of -s to create plurals, and -e to create long vowel sounds. Some students will discover that reading their words backwards prompts additional ideas. Additionally, the teacher can discuss word parts which can help students to understand what they read (such as how the suffix -tion usually changes a verb to a noun, as in the word relaxation).

While the book emphasizes individual practice, we prefer to play Big Words as a class game. I've outlined our procedures below. You can also access these directions as a printable Google Doc.

BIG WORDS Game Play

1. Have students cut apart the letters, and then begin forming as many words as possible using those letters. Remind them to not share ideas with partners, and to not call out words as they work (especially the Big Word). 
2. After about fifteen minutes, have students draw a line under their last word, and then number their list. They cannot add to or change their lists, but new words that they hear from classmates should be added once the game starts.
3. Divide the class into two teams. Direct students to use their pencil to “star” their four best words which they would like to share. These should be words which the other team might not have discovered.
4. Determine how the score will be kept (on a chalkboard, interactive whiteboard, etc.). The teacher should also have a way to publicly write words as they're shared so that students can copy them more easily.  Here are links to a PowerPoint scoreboard or an online scoreboard.
5. Hand a stuffed animal or other object to the first student from each team. This tangible item will help the students, and you, to know whose turn it is to share. Tell students that only the player holding the stuffed animal may speak. Other players who talk out of turn will cost their team one penalty point. These penalty points should be awarded to the opposing team, not subtracted from a score. This will greatly reduce unnecessary noise. 
6. Play takes place as follows: The first student shares a word, nice and loud. He or she spells it out. If any player on the opposing team has that word, they raise their hand quietly and the teacher checks to see that it is the same word. (It doesn't matter if any student on the speaker's team has the word or not). Every player who has it should check it off, and every player who does not have it should write it into their notebook. 
7. If no player on the opposing team has the word, then the team scores 3 points. If anyone on the opposing team has the word, then only 1 point is scored. 
8. If a player shares a word which has already been given aloud, their team is penalized 2 points! This helps everyone to pay better attention to the game. 
9. Ironically, the Big Word counts for as many points as any other word. Feel free to change that if you prefer, but I discovered that if I make it worth more points, students waste an extraordinary amount of time trying to form the Big Word alone, while ignoring the creation of any smaller words. 
10. Play until a predetermined time, and then if the Big Word hasn't been formed yet, provide students with the first two or three letters to see who can create it.

Enjoy the game! I know your students will.

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Games are the most elevated form of investigation.  ~ Albert Einstein

I just finished reading Cathy N. Davidson's wonderful Now You See It: How the Brain Science of Attention Will Transform the Way We Live, Work and Learn. I'll need to reread it, to be honest, because too often my mind began drifting to my own classroom as I read. I began asking myself if I was doing all that I could to engage students, and the answer was a sad and resounding no. My classes are severely lacking in game play.

According to Davidson, "Games have long been used to train concentration, to improve strategy, to learn human nature, and to understand how to think interactively and situationally." In the classroom, games capture and focus attention, increase motivation, and allow for complete, overt engagement.

My most often downloaded resource, in fact, is a Theme Game I created on Google Slides. At least one of my readers a day downloads this activity, which means that other teachers are seeing the value of game play in the classroom.

I readily admitted to my students that I created Bug, and it would have some, well, "bugs" that needed to be worked out. But students were eager to help in this regard, and our finished game is best described through the Google Slides presentation below.


What We Learned Together

1) We decided that certain modifications were allowed (simple switch, blend mend, one letter better) since they were sophisticated and advanced the game, while others were not allowed (adding a simple s to create a plural, adding both a vowel and a consonant together, reconstructing a word that has already been spelled). Students likewise dismissed the possibility of allowing prefixes and suffixes, deciding that those modifications didn't truly change the words enough.

2) We learned that four to five minutes was a suitable time for each round of play. Once each round finished, players could challenge their current partner if the match ended in a tie, or winners could challenge other winners and losers could challenge other losers, or, simply, anyone else could challenge any other classmate. Students didn't care whom they played; students simply wanted to play! My period one class of only eight students played using a traditional bracket to decide a final winner, but other classes were content to engage in free range play.

3) Students did begin to employ strategies. One clever student used "shrug" as her first word each time, instantly earning a power up and leaving her partner with a difficult word to manage. When her second partner countered with "shrub," this student needed to quickly adapt and used her earned power down to create "scrum." Scrum? Yes, this game encourages vocabulary development as well.

4) By game's end we concluded that, catchy name aside, every new game couldn't begin with "bug." Too many students were trying to play the same words each round, and too many rounds fell into the same predictable list of words. We decided that each new game should start with a different three letter word.

5) We played our games with large (12 x 18) paper and colored markers, but for a future game we're likely to play with standard sized paper and colored pencils. Students liked the visual separation that two colors provided, but the size format probably won't be needed in the future.

We would love to hear your recommendations, variations, and success stories!

Add a Comment

Games are the most elevated form of investigation.  ~ Albert Einstein

I just finished reading Cathy N. Davidson's wonderful Now You See It: How the Brain Science of Attention Will Transform the Way We Live, Work and Learn. I'll need to reread it, to be honest, because too often my mind began drifting to my own classroom as I read. I began asking myself if I was doing all that I could to engage students, and the answer was a sad and resounding no. My classes are severely lacking in game play.

According to Davidson, "Games have long been used to train concentration, to improve strategy, to learn human nature, and to understand how to think interactively and situationally." In the classroom, games capture and focus attention, increase motivation, and allow for complete, overt engagement.

My most often downloaded resource, in fact, is a Theme Game I created on Google Slides. At least one of my readers a day downloads this activity, which means that other teachers are seeing the value of game play in the classroom.

I readily admitted to my students that I created Bug, and it would have some, well, "bugs" that needed to be worked out. But students were eager to help in this regard, and our finished game is best described through the Google Slides presentation below.


What We Learned Together

1) We decided that certain modifications were allowed (simple switch, blend mend, one letter better) since they were sophisticated and advanced the game, while others were not allowed (adding a simple s to create a plural, adding both a vowel and a consonant together, reconstructing a word that has already been spelled). Students likewise dismissed the possibility of allowing prefixes and suffixes, deciding that those modifications didn't truly change the words enough.

2) We learned that four to five minutes was a suitable time for each round of play. Once each round finished, players could challenge their current partner if the match ended in a tie, or winners could challenge other winners and losers could challenge other losers, or, simply, anyone else could challenge any other classmate. Students didn't care whom they played; students simply wanted to play! My period one class of only eight students played using a traditional bracket to decide a final winner, but other classes were content to engage in free range play.

3) Students did begin to employ strategies. One clever student used "shrug" as her first word each time, instantly earning a power up and leaving her partner with a difficult word to manage. When her second partner countered with "shrub," this student needed to quickly adapt and used her earned power down to create "scrum." Scrum? Yes, this game encourages vocabulary development as well.

4) By game's end we concluded that, catchy name aside, every new game couldn't begin with "bug." Too many students were trying to play the same words each round, and too many rounds fell into the same predictable list of words. We decided that each new game should start with a different three letter word.

5) We played our games with large (12 x 18) paper and colored markers, but for a future game we're likely to play with standard sized paper and colored pencils. Students liked the visual separation that two colors provided, but the size format probably won't be needed in the future.

We would love to hear your recommendations, variations, and success stories!

Add a Comment

By Sergio Della Sala & Mike Anderson

In the past ten years, there has been growing interest in applying our knowledge of the human brain to the field of education, including reading, learning, language, and mathematics. Teachers themselves have embraced the neuro revolution enthusiastically. A recent investigation in the US-based journal Mind, Brain, and Education showed that almost 90% of teachers consider knowledge about brain functioning relevant for the planning of education programmes.

This has resulted in the development of a number of new practices in education: some good, some bad, and some just crazy. Too often, people with the clout to make decisions about which practice is potentially profitable in the classroom setting, ignore evidence in favour of gut feelings, the authority of ‘gurus’, or unwarranted convictions. In short, opinions rather than data too often inform implementations in schools. Hence we have had theories suggesting that listening to Mozart can boost intelligence, foot massages can help unruly pupils, fish oil can boost brain power, and even the idea that breathing through your left nostril can enhance creativity! Sadly, it is often scientists themselves who promulgate unsubstantiated procedures.

We shouldn’t ignore the good practices and innovations in education thanks to the developing neuro revolution. A popular example might be the neuroscience data suggesting a strong neural link between fingers and numbers. This is testified by the observation that 6 year old children who are good in recognizing their fingers when touched will later also be better at arithmetical performances. However, more often than not “the good” classroom developments are actually centered around more mainstream cognitive findings. One such finding, named spaced practice, has been replicated many times; it shows that distributing learning over time is more efficient than massing it all together. For example, if students stockpile learning just before an exam, they may do well enough, but if they want to retain the material in the long term, then retrieving it via multiple tests is much better.

Inevitably, we are drawn to discussing “the bad” developments: one of our favourite examples is the use of ineffective coloured lenses to aid reading. This and several other unproven “aids” are potentially damaging the whole idea that knowledge of the mind-brain may contribute to efficacious educational practice. And of course much of current enthusiasm for neuroeducation involves ugly mistranslations of excellent research into an educational arena. Take for instance the misapplication of the well developed theory of reading  (the so called dual-route theory) which has been caricatured and wrongly applied in education to justify an ideological stance from teachers preferring a whole-reading (or holistic) approach at the expense of phonics-based teaching. Briefly, the dual-route theory says that single-word reading can be accomplished through a route of letter to sound conversion (phonics) or through a route of direct visual recognition (whole word reading). It does not say that both are equally effective in teaching children to read. Indeed, several studies have demonstrated that phonics is a more effective method; yet the holistic approach to learning to read rages in the classrooms.

The neuro- prefix is very fashionable nowadays, and neuroeducation is just one of the myriad offsprings. Neuroscience offers an invaluable contribution to assess, diagnose, and perhaps manage pathologies, including pathologies of learning in children and adolescents. However, neuroscience as such has so far proved to have little to offer to everyday, normal education. The discipline which has most to offer is instead cognitive psychology, and from this comes some of the “good” that scientists could endow education with. Some of the findings from cognition are solid and counter-intuitive; for example, retrieval practice that, though receiving little support by pedagogists, has proved effective in improving pupils’ learning. This practice is based on the finding that retrieving material through several testing enhances learning of that material more than studying it over and over again.

The psychology of learning could prove efficacious in an educational context.  However, science should never be prescriptive; it offers possible windows of knowledge which may or may not be applicable or relevant in specific contexts such as the classroom. There are no ready-made recipes when it comes to mastering the relevance of brain functioning to teaching today. The last thing teachers need is to be superficially trained in neuroscience, but they should certainly watch this space.

Sergio Della Sala is a Clinical Neurologist, Professor of Human Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Edinburgh, UK. He is co-editor with Mike Anderson of Neuroscience in Education: the good, the bad, and the ugly, and editor of Cortex. His research focuses on the cognitive deficits associated with brain damage.

Mike Anderson is a Professor of Psychology and Director of the Neurocognitive Development Unit at the University of Western Australia. His research focuses on the influence of the developing brain on intellectual functions in children.

Image credit: Photograph of boy studying by Lewis Wickes Hine, ca. 1924, via Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, National Child Labor Committee Collection, [image number nclc.05276].

The post Neuroscience in education appeared first on OUPblog.

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I have no teaching qualifications. I'm not an educational expert. But simply through being a children’s writer (and in addition, a parent) I’ve been drawn into taking an interest in the latest raft of proposals about our children’s education.

It started with a phone call from my local radio station, BBC Radio Leeds. What did I think about children learning poetry by heart, they asked. Huh? Was my highly articulate reply. The truth was I didn’t have a worked out opinion, but learning poetry by heart is one of the proposals in the new Gove paper on primary education, and so (the radio station reckoned, not unreasonably) as a children’s writer, and one who regularly goes into schools, I really ought to have a view.

So, I read the proposals. I went on air. And I’ve been stunned by the conviction – almost vitriol – that seems to characterise the debate. Learning poetry was an essential art, inducting children into the rhythm of the language, giving them discipline and the lasting gift of verse that their grandparents enjoyed, one side thundered. Drilling kids in poetry was a regressive step, designed to humiliate them, and destroy their love of learning, thundered the other. The trouble is, as with most educational debates, it never seems to me as cut and dried as the opposing camps suggest. It could be a good idea. But a lot depends on the way it’s done.

Around the same time, the Children’s Laureate, Michael Rosen, was circulating a petition for children’s writers to sign, condemning the provisions on phonics in the same government document. (Read the petition here.) Once more, I felt uncomfortable. Rosen is one of the most articulate critics of Gove’s approach to education in general.

 But...my own impression is that phonics can be helpful. I doubt that - as Rosen sometimes seems to imply – exposure to storytelling and being surrounded by books is enough to get kids reading. Not at first. I’ve watched my own child learn to read. I’ve talked to other parents. And I’ve talked to dyslexia tutors, who often advocate a structured approach.

Above all, as a writer, I’ve visited plenty of primary schools, and met the children who are struggling to read at a level appropriate to their age. That’s desperately sad.

It’s left me feeling that, as a children’s writer, I’m not confident to weigh in on reading methodologies. The important thing is not ideology, but what works. I’d like others to make that decision, based on the very best evidence out there. (Not an easy task I know.)

Where I DO have a strong conviction, and where I strongly agree with Michael Rosen’s petition, is on the importance of reading for pleasure. Once children have mastered the basics of reading – by whatever methodology – they need to enjoy it. Otherwise they won’t read. And they must, if they are to become truly literate, educated people, capable of understanding the world around them – the world that lies beyond their own narrow experience.

As many people, including Michael Rosen and the Society of Authors, have pointed out, it is scandalous that the government, which is so ready to impose targets and objectives generally, is prepared to give no more than lip-service to the idea of “reading for pleasure”. The government acknowledges the vast body of research supporting its importance. Every school should be encouraging it, they say. Yet none of the concrete measures needed to encourage it are in place.

What is needed? It’s simple really.

1. Every school should have a library. Schools make space for computers – but books are far cheaper, and what children need if they are going to read is books.
2. Every school should have a librarian.Somebody on the staff of every school should have the job of understanding which children’s books are out there, choosing the stock, and guiding the children to the books that might interest them. That also means they need the budget and the training. It shouldn’t depend on luck – that there is somebody on the teaching team that has that special interest – as it does at the moment. 

It would make such a huge difference. It really would. So, I say forget about the ideology. The arguments about whether six year olds should be reciting Longfellow, or following whichever brand of phonics.

GET THE BOOKS TO THE CHILDREN 

It’s not rocket science. It’s something surely on which we can all agree.

Emma's web-site
Emma's latest book is Wolfie.

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