Language Objective: Actively engage in discussion as a member of a small group.
Essential Questions: What is the difference between Scrabble and Scrabulous, what's the problem, and on which side do I stand?
Today in class students worked together in groups of four. We began with a review of the concept of the board game Scrabble. Then we did a Word Splash activity that I was introduced to yesterday by our Literacy Coach. Students worked together to find connections between seemingly random words like tiles, architect, Macy's, and Great Depression with the key word Scrabble. Students then rearranged sentences to form a paragraph about the creation of Scrabble; a volunteer summarized for the class. After a short discussion, students turned to the completion of a T-M-R chart; students were given four relevant, but for the most part unknown, terms. They had a short discussion about these terms and each team member wrote: what the group Thought the terms meant, what the terms Might mean, and a Random definition. This was all prelude to an activity in which students in each group read an article and discussed it. Then one member from the group summarized it for the class. We began with Facebook, then moved to Scrabulous, and finally an article about the video made by TastesLikeTV in response to a request from the owners of Scrabble to remove the Scrabulous application from Facebook. We watched the video, and students had a chance to compete by creating words using Scrabble tiles. The lesson was fun and fast-paced; students processed a lot of information and were able to synthesize, evaluate, and generate questions of their own.
Homework: SSR.
