I have written a post about using Wheel Decide, which is a free online spinning tool. This tool has proven to be one of my students’ favorite tools and appears frequently in the classroom. It has the power to turn something completely normal (like a fill-in-the-blank exercise) into something super exciting.
In my original post, I shared 5 ways I used Wheel Decide to improve teaching and learning in the classroom. In this post, I am going to share 3 other ways that I have successfully used this tool with my students.
Assessing understanding
I recently started using a flipped learning model with a class and decided to use Wheel Decide to test their understanding of the text they read at home. They usually complete a T / F exercise or answer a series of questions about the text to assess comprehension. To replace or supplement these exercises, you can use Wheel Decide. Take key vocabulary from a reading text, video, or listening assignment and create a tool to spin around. Students have to explain the meaning of the word in relation to text / video / audio, for example Kathak: Kathak is the typical Indian music and dance seen in Bollywood films.
It can be formal or informal, spoken or written, and it can be conducted individually, in pairs or in groups. It works well as a collaborative learning activity such as a “word game” (Students take turns in their team to write a sentence that includes the keyword and the rest of the team checks the sentence and adjusts or improves it if they can. Teams can have the same or different words and share their sentences with other teams that Verifies the sentence / information is correct). If you want to add a fun element to the activity, you can add information that tests the memory as well, for example 14 million: 14 million Indians go to the movies every day.
If you use the flipped model, this activity can also be used to hold students accountable for their pre-semester work. Give students the words on the wheel before class so they can prepare their responses after watching, reading, or listening to pre-class material, and when they get to class, spin the wheel!
Developing narrative competence
I used Wheel Decide to practice using voice tags. Putting sentences together to make speech coherent is something students often find difficult and need lots of opportunities to practice.
Create a wheel with the audio specifiers you want your students to use, and then:
Have them create their own sentences using the sound markers chosen by the wheel.
If they need more support, give them the sentences to modify or add correct speech signs, for example, practice hard. They didn’t win. Although they trained hard, they didn’t win.
For lower-level students, you can create a fill in the blank activity where students only need to match correct sentences and speech mark, for example __________ Instructor hard, not winning.
Doing homework
In my first post, 5 Ways to Use the Decision Wheel, one of the ideas was to use the roulette wheel to do writing exercises like filling in the blanks, filling in the correct action form, choosing the correct answer, etc. . Exercises with the wheel can be performed outside the classroom. A link to your wheel can be shared with students or the wheel can be embedded on their website, blog or wiki and they can spin the wheel themselves at home. If you want your students to complete 8 questions, create a wheel with 16 questions. Students spin the wheel and complete the first eight questions that the wheel lands on. They feel like they get a good deal as they only have to complete half of the questions and you can always give students the ability to complete more for additional grades.
One activity that works well in class or as homework is using a wheel to create comparison sentences. Spin the wheel twice and create a sentence comparing the two words. If you want the activity to be more fun and challenging, use words that are not from the same family, such as Madrid, Barcelona, Table, TV, Sarah, Pedro, Theater, Cinema, Messi, Shakespeare. Students should really think hard to compare Shakespeare to a table, for example, Shakespeare is more famous than the table.
* Remember to scroll down to use the advanced options and the “Remove after landing option” if you don’t want the same word to appear again.
There you have it, 3 more ways to make learning more dynamic, interactive and engaging. Medium.com
Get spinning!