Using Socrative to Review Vocabulary

In this post, I describe the steps of a lesson plan that involves the integration of Socrative.com as a type of vocabulary review exercise. This is being used to help students review synonyms that students need to know associated with specific vocabulary words they encounter in the course readings. It is important that students know how to use synonyms for specific vocabulary words in an integrated reading/writing course because it is included in the ability to summarize and paraphrase what you read.

Introduction:

The vocabulary review includes a number of multiple choice type items that help prepare students for the key vocabulary/synonyms that will be featured on the achievement tests. It contains selected words from Reading Explorer 4, chapters 7A, 7B and 9A. Some of the review items are from topics covered in the readings, while others have been adapted from the Corpus of Contemporary English (COCA) to ensure they feature the most frequent collocations.  

Teacher Set-up:

The quiz involves students logging on using their smartphones. The teacher should access socrative.com and set up an account beforehand. Then, they can select the “import quiz function” and enter this number: “SOC-856897”.

This will allow you to add the quiz to your teacher module in socrative.com

Next you need to create a space race so that learners can team up into groups and compete against one another. To get an idea of how you can set up a space race using socrative, watch this quick youtube tutorial video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wNnVUKVIAc

Review of Steps:

• Access the main menu of socrative. 

•  Select space race. This will display the room number and ask you how many teams to assign students. If you have a class similar in size to mine (13 students), then you can choose 3-4 so that there are roughly 3-4 students in a group. You can auto select colors or give students a choice.

• Once you have selected these options, a new window opens that displays the room number, how many students have selected a team, and what colors have been selected.

• Students can google socrative.com using their smartphones. This will bring up either the student or teacher version. They should click on the student version. Then they will be prompted to enter the classroom number (which you will project on a screen to the class).

•  As students are logging on, assign them groups and have them choose the colors. Students should enter their names when they are asked to (this allows for you to view their individual performance). Once the site shows that every student has logged in, you can begin the space race. If a student doesn’t have a smartphone, then they can take turns submitting answers on a classmate’s phone.

•   After students have completed the space race and you have congratulated the winning team, ask students if there were words they didn’t know. What words gave them difficulties in the quiz? These are words that warrant more discussion and that they need to study to be prepared for the achievement test. 

Note: Once students complete the activity, I will also post the results as well.