Music Puzzlers And Matching Games

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A music puzzler has the potential to be especially engaging to adolescents. We used students' favorite songs in class and asked students to talk about the songs using the target words for the day. Discussion prompts included the following (target words are in italics): (1) Interpret the song— say what you think it means. (2) What do you like or dislike about the song? Be specific; share exact details. (3) What is this song similar to? What is it almost the same as? Activities such as this one had built-in engagement for using the target words, because students were using the words to discuss music they really enjoyed. This activity is an example of using words in multiple contexts and personalizing word meanings, a recommendation of McKeown and Beck (2004) among others.

Adolescents need opportunities to interact with their peers, and such opportunities are very motivating (Klingner & Vaughn, 2004; Sturtevant et al., 2006). A series of matching games that we played in Language Workshop gave students opportunities to process word meanings in multiple contexts and Cheap Cartier Jewelry ...
... to interact with peers. Matching activities involved the three to four target words for that day, as well as target words from previous sessions, allowing students to revisit the target words repeatedly in different contexts. Such strategies, as aforementioned, are widely recommended in the vocabulary literature (Beck, McKeown, & Kucan, 2002; Blachowicz & Fisher, 2000; Stahl & Nagy, 2006).

Here is the play-by-play for our matching activities. On card stock, we created a set of cards for each of the target words in Language Workshop. Each student would draw a card from a hat, and each card had a word, a definition, or a sentence (with a blank where the word would go). Students with a word card would have to find the students with the matching definition and sentence cards. Variations on these matching games created different challenges for students. For example, students sometimes had to fin their groups in complete silence, and sometimes their cards were taped to their backs so that students had t help each other get into the right groups. Games like these meet both adolescents' previously mentioned word-learning needs and social needs because the games allow for multiple exposures to words in multiple contexts, opportunities to practice word meanings, and opportunities for collaboration.

The matching activities were engaging ways to for groups, and we used a series of follow-up activities t help students personalize word meanings and generate new situations in which the words might because In particular, activities included ones with visual sup port for the target words. For example, we sometime asked groups to create a short skit to dramatize the word, draw a picture of a context using the word, o write a new sentence using the word. They would then Cartier Jewelry present their work to the rest of the groups and the rest of the groups would have to guess eac group's word. When students drew pictures or wrote sentences, speed gallery walking proved to be a very engaging activity. On flipchart paper, teams drew their pictures or wrote new sentences (with a bland where the word should be) for the target words. I: groups, students traveled around to each poster and wrote down the word they thought the group was trying to portray.