S-S Interactions Activity on Vocabulary Building for EC Students (The Jumbled Letters Hunt)

By DN Santi

There are many activities that we can do to introduce or to give EC students practice on vocabulary or difficult words we find in the lesson. Most of the activities are drilling in many different ways. Drilling the words is good to make students familiar with the spelling and pronunciation, but, on the other hand, drilling students all the time can be boring on the students as well on the teacher’s part. So EC teachers must be very creative in designing vocabulary lessons that are not only meaningful but also fun. Here I come up with the idea of a game that can be carried out to introduce or to practice vocabulary for EC students which also incorporates S-S Interactions since this activity requires students to works collaboratively in small groups. This game is called “The Jumbled Letters Hunt”.

The Jumbled Letters Hunt

Level                     : All EC Levels

Language Point: Vocabulary Building

Activity                 : Following some clues, arranging jumbled letters, for higher level SS making sentences

Aim                        : to introduce, to review, or to practice the previously taught vocabularies

Materials             : Cut-out papers for the jumbled letter cards and the clue cards

Time                      : 15-20 minutes

Preparation

1.      Make some vocabulary cards containing jumbled letters of the target language/ vocabulary. For example

N-I-C-P-A-S-H

:

The lesson is about vegetables and the sample card is the jumbled letters for SPINACH. So, you make the cards into different colors as many as the groups you have in your class, e.g. blue for group 1, green for group 2, etc.

2.       Make the clue cards containing the directions on where students can find the cards. You should adjust the clues with the situation and the condition of your classroom, and for higher levels you can put the cards in different parts of the building. The teacher reads the clue and students compete to find the card and then they arrange the jumbled letters into word. For example:

	The card is under the teacher’s desk

For higher levels you can give more intriguing clue, for example:

	On the second floor of this building you can find 2 benches. The card is behind one of those benches.

3..       Have some minutes before you start the class to hide the word cards inside or outside the classroom. If you hide the cards outside you can also cooperate with some people e.g. other teachers, janitor, or the security to give away the cards or to give out the clues.

Procedure

Divide the students into groups of three or four. Tell them that they are going to be groups of  detectives. Their mission is to find a “secret code”. To find it they have to follow some clues given by the teacher. Each code contains a jumbled letters which they have to arrange into meaningful word. For higher level students can make sentences using the word. You must keep the score if they can crack the code on the jumbled letter cards or create correct and meaningful sentence. The activity goes on until all cards are found.

This activity is fun and easy to do. I believe students can learn vocabulary or the difficult words in the lesson more enthusiastically if we as teachers can provide interesting activity for them. Just give it a try and see the result.