Scrabbled English

In order to review teaching strategies, it is a good idea to get feedback from students at the conclusion of a unit. Some teachers go for the survey option, but as a more visual-kinaesthetic person and a bit of an anti-technology Luddite (yes I know that it is ironic, given that I am using technology right now), I thought it would be interesting to use Scrabble. I think Scrabble is an underused teaching tool, for which there may be many more applications as yet undiscovered by me.

In the last lesson with my year senior English class, I asked them to reflect, in groups, on their English program by using Scrabble letters to create a statement. I gave a prize for the group which scored the highest when they added the individual letter scores together, though in hindsight I should have qualified that I was after a complete sentence! Nevertheless, the winning group made quite creative use of adjectives in their creation:

 This group, however, should probably have received bonus points for coming up with a coherent statement:

Some things to note if you plan to do something similar:

• I am fortunate in having a number of Scrabble sets sitting around at home growing dusty. You may be able to borrow additional sets from your library, friends, etc. Hasbro sells sets of Scrabble tiles for a very reasonable US$6.50 (http://www.hasbro.com/customer-service/orderform.cfm?sku=4024), but sadly, this offer is only available to US residents. 
• Failing that, you could invest in a few sets of Bananagrams (http://www.bananagrams-intl.com/checkcountry.asp?page=index.asp), which I have seen sold in Australia in Borders.
• you'll need to allow a fair amount of time for students to complete the activity. I did this in a 40 minute lesson, and it probably took up a good 20 minutes of the lesson.
• obviously one of the drawbacks with Scrabble letters is the lack of punctuation! Think of some possible ways around this.
• you may like to reward groups for correct spelling (you may have spotted a spelling mistake in the second group's statement!), use of alliteration, rhyme, etc.

Happy Scrabbling!