VOCABULARY BUILDING
A word game for a classroom!
Use it to energize the class
I was recently doing a guest lecture in a school for students of grade 8. The class was all too happy about not having their regular teacher and finding someone new. I talked to them about mobile apps and how they are developed. I initially kept the class very interesting by telling them stories about some of their favorite apps like Instagram and Snapchat and some of the stories around what made them click. While I had simplified the content to appeal to students of grade 8 but still after a point it still started getting a little heavy for them as there was a lot of new stuff they were consuming especially on the technology side.
That’s when I thought of playing a little game with them. Children always love a little competition in class and it gives them a chance to show off their skills and get a chance to do a little one upmanship on the others. Also winning a game isn’t like showing off good grades. That’s something which children are often pressurized to get by their parents and so good grades tend to have a different flavor.
The game I played is called Joined Words and it is also available as a web based game and app. It involves guessing a joined word, which is basically a compound word or a word that can be expressed as a combination of two words. Football, lipstick, tenant, cardboard etc. are all examples of Joined Words. In this game, you get three clues which all describe the same word or parts of it. For example:
First Word is ‘A part of your body’
Second Word is ‘what glue does’
and together the joined word is ‘A cosmetic accessory’
What’s the answer?
It’s Lipstick.
Explanation: Lip is ‘a part of your body’ and glue ‘sticks’ — lipstick is the cosmetic accessory.
Like this, I made several combinations of clues and words and gave it to the children, They simply loved the game. It brought back the energy in the class as they became competitive and each student was trying to crack the puzzle before the others. After playing 4–5 words they were refreshed enough to come back to the main topic. I often made the clues such that they have to use some of their general knowledge as well to guess it. Here is a good one, I think:
JW#1
First Word: There’s Red, Black and Yellow but its generally blue
Second Word: A parent might have one
Joined Word: Some countries have three while others have up to six
Could you get the answer? I’ll give the answer to the puzzle at the end of this article so you can check yours. Here’s another word you can try if you got the first one. This one is a little less common, so its possible not all the students in the class will know it and they might just get to learn a new word:
JW #2
First Word: You can take this in a swimming pool
Second Word: You might find one lying below a tree
Joined Word: A type of survey
If you got the answer to the second one, you might have noticed that for the same word (also in the first puzzle), you can have two different clues because one word in English often has multiple meanings.
After playing this game with children and getting an excellent response, I decided to make this game available to everyone on Teachers Pay Teachers. There is a free edition which you can use to play the game on the screen and there is a paid edition which can be used for printing out worksheets in the classroom and sharing with students. Here are the links to the free edition and the paid edition
Free Edition: https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Joined-Words-An-innovative-vocabulary-game-that-teaches-compound-words-10551493
Do try them out in your classroom if you like the game and share your feedback in the comments.
Now for the answers of the two riddles:
JW#1: Season, JW#2: Dipstick
Hope you got them right!
You can also check out my website which has a new Joined Word riddle everyday: https://jw-daily.web.app/
