Word games serve twin purpose

[sajiv]

Word games serve twin purpose

Tiruchi: Word games as an activity can be quite interesting in a classroom.

The activity serves twin purposes; while coming out with new words and understanding their usages, students also get familiar with the spellings. Instances of students losing marks due to writing wrong spellings of similar sounding words either due to ignorance or oversight are not uncommon.

Familiarising students with as many words as possible was the purpose of The Hindu – Newspaper in Education session at the Samad Higher Secondary School on Monday. Handling the activity on 'fun with spellings', a module of the theme 'recapitulate', the resource person Nandita Ravinder started off with 'staircase' game wherein sixth standard students who were divided into three groups were required to spell word after word with the ending letter. No wonder, enthused that they were by the momentum generated in a group activity, the students kept lengthening their lists.

The second activity was identifying words in a 'grid' formation on the lines of 'sudoku' in which students faced a higher challenge. They had to determine the appropriate missing letters in the blank columns and arrive at the intended words.In some cases, words spelt wrongly signify different meanings altogether. When the words become irrelevant to the context, the students are bound to lose marks. A repertoire of words in students' memory is to their definite advantage, explains Ms. Nandita.