Dice Games, Academic Taboo And Pictionades

By Author: Cornelia
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Large dice proved to be a great prompt for an active game for students because it encouraged active processing and personalization of word meanings. W taped a target word to each side of one die, and task to each side of another die. The tasks included instructions such as write a sentence, act it out, and drat a picture. Students took turns rolling the dice. Then small groups worked together to complete the task indicated by the task die for the word indicated by the word die.

Based on Taboo by Hasbro, this quick-thinking word game involved words in multiple contexts with opportunities for students to process and personalize word meanings. The object of the game is for a student to get his or her team to say a target word by describing it using related words; however, there is a list of closely related words that cannot be used. For example, the student might have D&G Jewelry to get the team to say the word umbrella without using the words rain, open, protect, or water. For Language Workshop, we modified this game somewhat. First, we made new game cards with the academic ...
... target words and other words that came up in our instructional texts and discussions. The group was divided into two teams, but two students would come up at the same time to play for their teams. This took the spotlight, and the pressure, off just one student, and allowed students who were not as proficient in English to actively participate with their peers. Also, because academic vocabulary words are so abstract, we did not include a list of related words that were banned from each play. If Students had the word context, for example, they could say whatever they could think of to get their team to say the word. Students would go through as many words as they could in one minute, and then the next team would send up two students to play. Our modification of Taboo gave us a fast-paced and highly interactive game that provided students practice with word meanings and with connections between words.

Many students are familiar with both Pictionary by Milton Bradley and Charades, and this game was a combination of both. It involved multiple contexts for words, visual support, and, again, opportunities for students to actively practice and personalize word meanings. The format used in Language Workshop Was similar to the format for Academic Taboo, but two students would come up for each team to draw the word and silently act it out rather than talk about It. Simple Pictionary proved to be very difficult with the academic words (anecdotally, we even watched college students have a difficult time trying to depict words like interpret or specific), so we added the charades component, hence Pictionades! This was a great game to practice D&G Jewelry Sale words from our instructional texts that had more concrete definitions, such as astronomer and Leonardo da Vinci. Students who struggled with explaining these words, but who had some initial conceptual understanding of them, could demonstrate their knowledge using actions and pictures. Their representations, then, gave all students participating in the game additional semantic information in a code other than language.