Alphaladder (ABC)

Description

Alphaladder is a collaborative activity devised by Dr Helen McGrath. It is a game in which students work together to guess a mystery word. Alphaladder teaches students about the structure and function of words. It is a useful, fun adjunct to the language component of an English program. Alphaladder gives a snapshot of students’ ability to analyse and describe word function and structure. It also provides evidence of their skills in collaborative discussion.

Procedure

Mystery Word

Choose a mystery word for the students to guess. The word could be chosen to tie in with an issue the class has been discussing, or to reinforce an aspect that is a current teaching point.

Teams

Divide the students into teams of five with assigned roles of questioner, runner, recorder, social skills scribe and leader.

Each team now prepares 10 Yes or No questions which must only be about the structure of the word, not its meaning. Questions could be about the number of syllables, or the part of speech, the presence of blends, double letters, plurals and so on. In the first round, the students have ten minutes to work out their questions, then two minutes as they refine their skills.

One team is the performing team, which calls out their questions. They have six minutes to call out questions and work out the answer, but two 90-second time-out sessions are also allowed for students to confer and rethink their strategy. They can call out the answer as soon as they think they’ve got it.

The remaining teams are the shadowing teams, who try to guess the mystery word before the performing team. They do this silently, then write down the word and run it out to the teacher. It must be written down with the number of the last question asked. Meanwhile the game continues as the guess may be incorrect.

Scoring

Scoring is simple. The performing team scores two points for every question they don’t have to use and the shadowing team gets a bonus if they guess the correct answer before the performers.

Link to Outcomes

Students describe and reason with patterns, structures and relationships in order to understand, interpret, justify and make predictions.

Adapted from Tasmanian Education Department, Dr Helen McGrath

Dynamic Strategies

Think/Clarification

Alphaladder (ABC)

Mystery Word

Questions

Guesses