Fast, Fun, and Free: A Vocabulary Game

 

In a recent grad school class, the professor directed us to head to the UpGoer Five Text Editor website and use the tool to write a definition for the word "molecule" using only the "ten hundred" most common words in the English language. This gave me an idea for a vocabulary activity for my classroom.

When I started my recent AP Chemistry unit on thermochemistry, I wrote new vocabulary words on index cards and handed them out to my students. I challenged them to write a definition for the word using the UpGoer Five Text Editor. At first, they claimed this was impossible because, as so many kids do, they wanted to copy a definition as they see it in a textbook or online and pretend that since they wrote a definition, they understood the definition. Using the text editor forced them to convey the meaning in simple terms, and they had to really dig into the meaning to do that. I gave them an example ("endothermic" = hot stuff goes in) and then they rose to the occasion.

Once all the definitions were done, I collected the index cards. After a quick shuffle, I read the definitions to the class and asked them to guess the words. At first, I offered a word bank, but several students said this made it too easy (!), so we eliminated the word bank. This second use of the vocabulary words gave them the reverse challenge - guess the word from the simplified definition - with a gaming element. Trying to guess the word gave them additional practice in thinking about new concepts in simple terms. 

Here are some of the examples:

Temperature: how hot something is

Heat: thing that moves from one area to another (hot to cold) and is hot

Thermal Equilibrium: when two things share warm or cool stuff until they match

Exothermic: lets go of the warm

Thermochemistry: field using admitted warm taken in

I used a couple of these definition cards to start class each day. If I forgot, my students reminded me. As an alternative, I could also have typed the words and definitions into Kahoot or Quizziz for a whole class competition. This was a fast, fun, and free way to introduce new vocabulary and I will definitely keep using this strategy in my classroom.