CHARADES! for Academic Vocabulary

One of the most important components of your instruction that students must know is Acadmic Vocabulary. In order for them to truly understand the content, they must understand those key terms that they may not hear anywhere other than inside the classroom.

CHARADES! is a popular party game in which participants are given a word/phrase that they must then act out or give clues about in order to get the other participants to guess the word/phrase.

CHARADES! is also an app that has built in word categories for participants to act out and guess. There is a feature that allows you to create decks with your own words/phrases. This would be a great tool for students to use for reviewing academic vocabulary.

There a several ways you can do this. A few of my ideas are:

1) Students can work in small groups. One student has the iPad with the term hidden from him/her so that the other students can see. Those students will give hints and clues about what the term is so that the first student can figure out the word.

2) One student can have the device facing them where other students can't see. That student would give hints and clues to try to get the other students to guess the term.

3) The teacher can have the iPad screen displayed for students and call on random students for different terms. You can even make it out into a game. You can give them a goal to reach a certain score during the time period (i.e. If you have 10 terms, they must score atleast 8 of them correct).

Check out the CHARADES! app as a tool for helping your students learn academic vocabulary.