Vocabulary Practice to Make Your Head Spin

/

I've been substitute teaching, and it's been WHEELY fun to put my own spin on the lessons.

Last week third graders had already been introduced to a list of vocabulary words that would show up in a short story they were about to read.

To review the vocabulary words, I entered them on wheels at SpinnerWheel.com. I spun the wheels and invited students to come up with sentences that use both words. Sometimes sentences came together effortlessly. Other times composing sentences was a struggle. Whether easy or difficult, we were able to increase word knowledge and address incorrect usage.

I've used SpinnerWheel.com before, and I have some tips for making vocabulary spinners.

  • I was able to copy the list of words from a PDF the teacher shared with me. (If the list was on paper, I could take a photo with my iPhone and then copy the words from the photo.)

  • I clicked the button to shuffle the entries so that words don't appear in the same order on both wheels.

  • The story takes place in the woods, so I changed the page theme and background to be woodsy colored.

  • I increased the number of seconds for the wheel to spin. This makes it more exciting when using the Spin All button.

  • I can save the page with my two wheels and come back to it later. The next time I need vocabulary wheels, I can simply open this saved page and replace the words.

  • I can share the Spinner Wheel page by clicking the Share button. I disabled the editing of entries before copying the link. I can give this link to students and they can spin their very own vocabulary combinations. Here's the shareable link to my vocabulary spinner page.

  • Next time, I might try it with three wheels! (You can add up to 8 wheels to a page.)

After several spins of the wheel, it was time to see how a chatbot trained for language would use our words in sentences. We asked ChatGPT to incorporate the words from the spinners into sentences. We were pleased with the results—the third graders were impressed!

ChatGPT was so good at generating sentences, so we asked it to do more. I asked it to use all 8 words in a paragraph written at a third-grade level. Again, we were amazed!

Finally, we prompted ChatGPT to write a limerick using all 8 words. It did not disappoint.

I often refer to Marzano's Six Steps to Effective Vocabulary Instruction. The steps are a way to teach academic vocabulary explicitly. The above activities fit into Steps 4 and 5: engaging in activities to build knowledge and asking students to discuss the words with each other. The above activities are also intriguing ways to get heads spinning and thinking.

@learninginhand Head-spinning vocabulary practice with wheels and a chatbot #edtech #teachingkids #teaching ♬ original sound - Tony Vincent