Preparing for The Wordmaster Challenge

How Do You Prepare for The Wordmaster Challenge?
by Bridget Suvansri


Here are some suggestions for getting ready many of which we do in class together.
1.  Make a study tool!  Look up the various meanings, parts of speech, and word forms of each word.  Students like to make flash cards, word webs, or a digital compilation of what they find.  I tell them to make a study tool that works for them!
2.  Use the words in sentences.  Try to drop them in conversations, and try to notice them when you are listening, reading, etc.  
3.  Make note of the typical or usual references of the words and the things the words are usually associated with.
4. Connect the words to each other by finding relationships between the words (keeping the part of speech in mind).  Connect words that are synonyms, antonyms, related words, and any ways the words many be connected.  We make categories and give the various categories general titles to help with this step.  Each group adds their brainstorming charts to a class doc for everyone to study!  See this example.  
5.  Create your own analogies using the words in an effort to predict what might be on the test.  Directions here.

6.  Finally, we play games!  Lots of games like Wordo (Wordmaster Bingo), Password.  I’ve even made up my own game called “The Interrogator” which gets kids asking higher level questions about the words and using the words in context.  Have kids make their own games on Quizlet, Quizziz, and Kahoot!  Fun for the whole class!  
7. Be a Sentence Smith! You can also make sentences using pairs of words that show their relationship and have the students post their sentences on Schoology or Padlet for all to see!  Here are the directions I give.  
8.  Make word pairs that go with the 16 ways to create analogies.  Here’s the directions and an example of a google sheets template I have my students use.  (An extra challenge would be to make two word pairs for each way….essentially creating an analogy for each analogy relationship).

Best of Luck!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The World's Largest Lesson Plan: My Summer PD

Image
by Bridget Suvansri It’s common for teachers to take large chunks of their summer vacation to teach summer school, work another job, or engage in professional development.  Some teachers even do all of the above.  As one of those teachers who takes some time for PD, I want to tell you my plans. What is the World’s Largest Lesson Plan? The World’s Largest Lesson Plan “aims to introduce the Global Goals for Sustainable Development  to children and young people everywhere, and help them take action,” and I want in!   It’s an amazing and extensive set of resources to help teachers teach students about the Sustainable Development Goals, or SDGs.   The Sustainable Development Goals are 17 goals to achieve 3 extraordinary things by 2030: End extreme poverty. Fight inequality and injustice. Tackle climate change. Don’t be fooled by thinking 2030 is SO FAR away!  It’s only 13 years away which means my incoming 6...
Read more

Author and Storyteller David Neilsen visits!

Image
What a treat for myself and my students! Middle Grades author David Neilsen visited our class to talk about how he gets inspired to write and what images specifically inspired him to write his two books:  Dr. Fell and the Playground of Doom and Beyond the Doors ! Being a master storyteller, David captivated students with his varied voices and surprising expressions!  The students laughed, oooed, ahhhed, and really stretched their imaginations creating stories based on some of the surprising images David presented to them.  He even wore a purple hat just like his main character, Dr. Fell. When I asked if I should have David come back next year to visit my new 6th graders, I got an emphatic "Yes!  Definitely!  He was AWESOME!" and I couldn't agree more! Check out more about David, his books, and his storytelling on his website . 
Read more

Leaving My Comfort Zone: What I Did on Summer Break

Image
In a  speech  I delivered to teachers at our convocation last year, I challenged them to do something outside of their comfort zone. Little did I know that on the last day of the school year, I would be boarding a plane to Nairobi, Kenya, to do something way out of my comfort zone. I would be “walking the walk” so to speak. I would be on a mission to help promote literacy and higher level thinking strategies to teachers in rural Kenya. Finding My Mission For many, mission trips are religious in nature or in direct response to natural disaster. For me, my mission stemmed from a global pen pal  course  I wrote and piloted. Through this course, I developed a relationship with  Kenya Connect , a non-profit group whose mission is to keep kids in school with various programs for health and education. The population they serve are generally subsistence farming families that live in extreme poverty (no electricity, no running water, no access to healthcare). In...
Read more