Saturday, September 17, 2011

Word Games at Lunch

One of the fascinating things about observing Mr. Mitchell's class is the extent to which students use their time productively. This is even true at lunch, where most of the students choose from a variety of word games to play alone, cooperatively, or even against each other over bluetooth or wi-fi. It's significant that all of the word games in this video were located and suggested by students.

In this short video, you'll see students playing Word Abacus, Worcle, and Word Warp X. The latter two are particularly interesting because you can touch words from the word lists to find their definitions and usages--something that the students often do, particularly when they create a word by trying plausible combinations of letters.

Word Warp is interesting because you can challenge other players in real time. In the video, Karli and Monique are challenging Mr. Mitchell.

The other fascinating thing I observed is the extent to which the students interact with each other in the process, and the extent to which the conversations that they have revolve around words, spellings, and meanings. Who said learning can't be fun?


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