Spinners and Speaking

Wheelofnames.com is one of my favorite websites. You can customize what items are on the wheel (and the colors, if that's your jam. it is my jam.), and you can save those wheels to use later. I have one for each of my classes, and then periodically, classes and I will build one together.

One of the ones we recently built had numbers on it. I picked about twelve people and asked them qui numerus acceptissimus tibi est? and they told me. This is hilarious, because they didn't know what they were being used for, and Mark's favorite number is 18, which is Known.

Everyone was mad at Mark about five minutes later.

In any case, I now had 1, 4, 18, 12, etc. I had the kids stand up in pairs facing each other and gave them a topic. (you could also have a wheel of topics if you want to leave it to chance)

We spun the wheel, and the wheel told them how many items in that category they had to come up with. There are virtues both to giving them the topic and then spinning the wheel, and to spinning the wheel and then giving them the topic. I encourage you to experiment and decide which you like best.

Depending on the level of chaos you thrive in in your classroom, you can have the pairs:

-shout their answers at each other in an attempt to get the requisite number of items before their partner (encourages both hilarity and quick thinking in the TL, but necessarily discourages listening)

-work together to come up with the requisite number of answers in a set amount of time/before other pairs.

Having shouted at each other for X number of seconds or until it sounds like they're winding down (my usual method of deciding when they're done), I pick a few pairs and ask them to share their best answers. You can just accept those answers as is, or it can lead to more PQA/circling/input.

The topics can be anything. In Latin two, they had (among other things) letters of the alphabet (we had a gimme to start :P), body parts, things you do in the baths, jobs, food words, and - I kid you not - things you can do to save energy in the home.

We did not spend time in any unit discussing "ways to save energy in the home." But you bet they know things like "turn off the lights" and "close the fridge," and they've never been asked to apply it in that way. It allows them to stretch and realize just what they can talk about. It's a good warm up or brain break, and the kids get a kick out of doing it.