Good for: review
This activity works well for
college classes.
It might work okay for high school classes if your period is right
before lunch hour, a break, or the end of school.
What you do is you inform the students that you will be going down a
list of their names (or up and down the rows, or around in a circle)
and will spell to each student a vocabulary word (or show it to them
on the board or overhead). The student is to try to show
you the sign for the word that you spelled.
If the student gets the word right, the student can leave. If
the student doesn't know the word or gets it wrong, he or she has to
stay and wait for "round 2" for another chance at a different word.
Tip: I tend to pick the hardest vocabulary words and show
those first. The skilled students (who really don't need the
extra exposure) know their word and thus get to leave first.
The students who need more practice, don't know their word and thus
end up staying longer (and getting more practice).
Tip: If you use Excel or some similar spreadsheet to track
grades, it is a relatively simple process to use your spreadsheet to
arrange the students in order from the highest point total
(cumulative scores) to the lowest point total. Of course I
don't tell the students that the list is arranged in that
order--that would be inappropriate. I just simply display the
list of names (without mentioning the scores) and go down the list
starting with the student who has the highest total points for the
course so far. That way the students with the lowest
scores definitely get more exposure for at least the first round,
and the students with the highest scores are able to leave class and
get on with their day.
Tip: I have no interest in
"totally" embarrassing an individual student by letting him or
her become "the dumbest" student in class by being the "last one" to
leave. That isn't necessary. I usually end the activity
when I get down to about 25% of the class. They've already figured
out by then that time that they need to do more studying.
If you get down to a handful of students it is time to stop and let
them all go. What I sometimes do is I inform them, "Okay, now
if ANYONE gets this next sign right, I'll let you ALL go!"
That jazzes them up and turns whoever knows the sign into a "hero."