Tag Archives: Prefixes

Practicing Vocabulary with Beat the Clock

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One of my favorite strategies for practicing vocabulary is Beat the Clock. This is a simple game where students compete against the clock, and themselves, to complete vocabulary tasks. It is a versatile strategy that can be used with any content and in a variety of ways, and it’s great as a final review before a test. In this blog post I will detail two variations.

Beat the Clock – True/False

To prep for this version, create 15-20 True/False statements using the target vocabulary. This example comes from my Powers of Ten Prefix Unit.

I recommend trying it out and timing yourself to decide how much time to give the kids to complete the task. In this example, I was able to answer the questions in about 30 seconds, so I tripled that and gave the kids 90 seconds. Most kids are able to finish the task in that time, so they feel successful right away.

To play with students:

  1. Put students in pairs. One partner will try to “Beat the Clock” and the other will watch the timer.
  2. Partner A goes first, and completes the task. Partner B tells them how long it took to complete the task, and Partner A records their time in the upper corner.
  3. Then it’s Partner B’s turn to “Beat the Clock”. Once both partners have had a turn, show the class the correct answers. Then, the power of the strategy is in doing it all again!
  4. The second time around, I generally mix up the order of the statements or change the definitions slightly. Even so, students almost always improve their time or their accuracy on the second round.

Beat the Clock – Vocabulary Puzzles

To prep for this version of the activity, you need to create Vocabulary Puzzles, similar to these ones from my Powers of Ten Prefix Puzzle resource.

Again, before you give the task to students, time yourself doing the task. Then, double or triple your time for the kids.

  1. I like to do this one as a partner task as well, but this time, the partners are working together to complete the puzzles. There are 20 puzzles in this resource, and because the shapes help the students, it is not that difficult. I give my students 2 minutes to do this with their partner.
  2. Once the 2 minutes are up, I project the Answer Key, which is included in the resource. Then, I ask the kids to mix up their cards and pass their set on to another group. This ensures that the cards are mixed up. 🙂
  3. Once every group has a new set of prefix cards, we try again!
Prefix Puzzles!

Beat the Clock is so effective because it’s simple to use and takes hardly any time! Your competitive kids will love it! Students who are less competitive generally don’t mind competing against the clock and themselves, so it can feel like a low risk to them.

Give Beat the Clock a try today – I think you, and your kiddos, will love it!

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Would You Rather?

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A photo of a classroom poster

For years, my kids and I have played the game “Would You Rather”? Would you rather eat a cockroach or swim with sharks? Would you rather climb Mt. Everest or live on the moon? We have whiled away many a car ride exploring the wacky side of life.

And then one day I thought, I should do this at school. To practice vocabulary terms!

We were working on Powers of Ten prefixes at the time, so I sat down to see if I could create cards with challenges related to that unit. I don’t know who had more fun – me while I was creating the cards or the kids while they were reading them!

I’ve used Would You Rather cards several different ways, but my hands down favorite is a Chalk Talk. All you need is some butcher paper and one copy of each of the Would you Rather cards. Cut out the cards and tape one to the top of a piece of butcher paper. Then, spread the eight pieces of butcher paper around the room – hang them on walls, lay them on tables, whatever you can do to create enough space for 3-4 students to crowd around.

Each student will need a marker. I tell them that they’ll have about 15 minutes to rotate from poster to poster. At each poster, they are free to write a response to the Would You Rather challenge OR they can respond to what another student wrote OR they can do both. I ask them to make sure that there are no more than 4 students at a poster at one time. And I tell them that they must be SILENT! The power of this game is that they can’t talk. It forces them to use the target vocabulary in writing, and to justify the thinking. That forces them to think about the meaning of the word. The kids love it, and they will often go back to a poster several times, adding to their original thinking and reading the responses that other students have written. And every time they do, they are practicing that target vocabulary again!

After about 15 minutes, I give them a two-minute warning so that they have time for one last response or revisit. Then, I have them sit down, and I go to each poster, reading a few of the responses from each. That gives them an opportunity to respond verbally, and we have a discussion for about 15 more minutes. By the end of that time, I guarantee they are using the vocabulary more confidently than at the beginning of the activity.

Please download my free, Would You Rather cards, and give it a try! Let me know how it goes.

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