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Mar 12, 2008 6:50 pm US/Central
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Board Game Helping Kids Get Better Test Scores
(WCCO)
A board game is helping fifth graders with reading and vocabulary at Cannon Falls Elementary School.
The game of Scrabble is helping more than 15,000 classrooms across the country learn new vocabulary words, including the kids in Cannon Falls.
Students in the fifth grade class there are getting to play and learn at the same time.
"You see like a bunch of words on the board and then you're just like, wow, I didn't know that was a word," said fifth grader Ashly Serres.
Teachers at Cannon Falls Elementary started the program 9 years ago with a focus to get kids to have fun with words.
"It's a great learning tool -- they're having fun and they're not really realizing that their learning math skills, they're learning spelling, they're learning reading -- language skills," said Lisa Peterson, a fifth grade teacher at Cannon Elementary. "I'm going to look for some really exceptional, outstanding, unique words from you."
"I was just looking through the dictionary and then I found it and I had the letters," said Hunter Lindblom, who put down 'ZED' during his turn. Zed is the British word for the letter z.
The game is paying off -- there's been an improvement in test scores.
"We are seeing expanded vocabulary in their writing ... in their weekly spelling tests ... and on a smaller scale it definitely shows," said Peterson.
No matter how you spell it out the kids say they enjoy the game.
"It kind of gets you talking to other people about words that you haven't really heard of before," said Ashly.
And there are prizes.
"You see a lot of new words, and you get points and it turns into money for the scrabble auction," said Kristin Rudeen.
Students play for points and at the end of the year those points are converted into money.
In turn, kids can use that money to buy things at an auction held in May.
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