quiz, quiz, trade

[tmdavis]

I'm currently using the strategy "quiz, quiz, trade" for vocabulary development. My students struggle with recognizing the definitions their peers give them as "correct" if they are not given verbatem. How do you teach students to properly evaluate answers if they themselves are building a working definition for the word? Does anyone have suggestions for teaching this type of thinking process? Or do you generally use "quiz, quiz, trade" for very concrete answers?

[Jackie Minor]

Vocabulary review is a great way to use QQ Trade. Notice I said "review". The students should be somewhat familiar with the words before using them in QQ trade. I know exactly what you mean though when you say they don't always grasp different ways of phrasing the definition. However, I think this is a great opportunity to expand their understanding of these words. Here are a couple of suggestions I have that you might try.
1.Modeling is really important. I think I would have a student come up and give you the definition....you think out loud, making connections between what they said and the answer on the card. This would show students how to "interpret" definitions. You may need to do this several times eventually having two students model it.
2. On the cards where you have the answers, maybe you can underline "key" words in the definitions. Students listening would listen for those key words instead of everything being exact.
3. Have a word wall in the room, where students can check definitions and answers if needed (or maybe a study guide at their desks).

I hope some of these ideas help. Sometimes you just have to stay with it a while, model and practice. Kids will get better at it!

Jackie

[Wendy Burke]

What a great question! In my district, students needed to know the exact definition for our state assessments. Along with all the recommendations that Dr. Minor gave, an additional structure I used was Rally Robin. During the earlier part of the week- I would have my students work with their shoulder partner, doing a Rally Robin, 1 student gave the word- the other gave the exact definition. Then they would switch roles. I used Quiz Quiz Trade on Friday as a fun review- using the same words and definitions they had worked with all week. My students loved it- as they were up moving around. Another great bonus of Quiz Quiz Trade- is you can spiral your vocabulary words from earlier in the year! Hope this helps! Best Wishes! Wendy

[sburgess]

These are all great ideas for building good vocabulary. An idea I had would be to have the students use the vocab word in a sentence. You could do QQT or RR this way. Partner 1 would read the sentence omitting the vocabulary word, and the partner 2 would try to figure out which vocabulary word would best fit the sentence.

Hope this helps!