A.D. Harris High School has been making a school-wide effort to focus on Vocabulary at their school this year. Literacy Coach Melanie Kelly, held a school-wide professional development session to present best practices in Vocabulary instruction based on the Isabel Beck book, Bringing Words to Life. Melanie also used this text to initiate a book study with the school’s Literacy Leadership team. Together, they were able to tailor some of the book’s activities to meet the needs of the students at A.D. Harris. Believing “exciting and engaging vocabulary instruction can set students on the path to a lifelong fascination with words” (back cover), members of the Leadership Team, along with Principal Anita Dillard, came together to explore the learning potential of word games such as: Balderdash, Scrabble, Upwords, and Apples to Apples. Group members researched the theory and practice behind each game before requesting district funds to purchase those that could be utilized for classroom instruction and differentiation. A brief description of these games follows:

Balderdash: A clever repackaging of the parlor game Dictionary, Balderdash includes several cards containing words that most folks have never heard of. Each word is read aloud and players attempt to create definitions that sound plausible. Points are awarded for every opposing player who guessed that your definition was the correct one.

Scrabble: In this classic word game, players use seven letter-tiles to form words on the gameboard. Each word earns points based on the commonality of the letters used. A player may only initiate new words that can be built from an “existing” word on the gameboard. This requires students to problem solve and think critically about how letters and words are used.

UpWords: Players form words on an 8x8 (or in the new edition 10x10) grid. Similar to Scrabble, words may be formed horizontally or vertically on the grid, but as the title suggests the letters may also be stacked. This adds a new dimension since words can be changed by stacking or substituting letters (limit of 5 high). Scoring is also different from Scrabble; there are no letter values, instead, when a new word is formed the number of tiles used in that word is counted and used as the score. A word that is flat (no stacked tiles) scores double, but the words that score the most are those that have lots of stacking.

Apples to Apples: This game consists of two decks of cards: Things and Descriptions. Each turn, the referee selects a Description and players try to pick, from the cards in their hands, the Things that best match that Description. The referee then chooses the Thing that appeals most and awards the card to the player who played it. Unusual combinations of Things and Descriptions are humorous to the extreme, and will quickly have the entire room motivated to think critically about words and their definitions.