This summer you might be pre-reading or re-reading some novels you’ll want to teach next year in any number of your ELA classes. While you’re brainstorming ideas for these units of study, consider how you might offer a tech twist on your vocabulary instruction using self-marking Google Forms.
In grade 11 students at my school read Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, a wonderful novel that opens up discussions of decisions and consequences and science and ethics. It’s also a fantastic pairing with Harvest by Manjula Padmanabhan, a more contemporary drama studied later in the course. The novel presents cross-curricular opportunities and moments for social-emotional learning related to decision-making and consequences. However, the vocabulary can be a challenge based simply on the time of its writing; language of the 1800s is not the same language as 2022, very obviously so in some aspects of the novel.
The Tech Twist and Its Benefits
In order to support student learning with vocabulary I’ve moved to the self-marking Google Form – or a Google Quiz, if you will.
This approach to vocabulary instruction over the last year has done wonders for their increased understanding of the vocabulary and the novel. And the main reason is that they’re allowed to take and re-take the quiz; it’s not a one-and-done approach. Plus, I don’t log the score/grade of the quiz results.
But there’s also additional benefits too!
- This re-take approach also encourages risk-taking for my students. They have become more willing to try and fail (or succeed) knowing there’s a re-do option available, with no questions asked. It has also translated to more risk-taking and therefore increased learning opportunities in other novel study activities.
- They have become more focused on the learning rather than just the result. Don’t get me wrong many still want a perfect score on that first try but every student can now achieve this by going through the quiz more than once. And the best part of that is no one knows, aside from them and the teacher, how many times they’ve tried the quiz.
- This has provided invaluable data about areas where students may need more support. The student who tries once and gets 3/10 but doesn’t try again – why is that? Prompts a check-in that a standalone one-time quiz wouldn’t offer. A group of students who might keep missing a particular type of word, can lead to a specific mini-lesson about adverbs, adjectives, or even about prefixes to help them out.
How it Works
Choosing the Vocabulary
There are a few ways to determine which vocabulary to choose. This depends on the students in your class and the various levels of understanding of the novel being studied. When choosing a word consider how it might be used again. Is it a word that’s simply a challenge and part of an older text or is it a word that a student might encounter again in a future text?
One approach to selecting vocabulary is to have students record challenging words for the first chapter or two. In this way, the teacher can get input for vocabulary to review as the novel continues. This can establish a baseline for different student groups and provide an idea of the level of challenge for quizzes. You could continue this practice throughout the novel checking every few chapters to create a growing list. Students submit their form, teacher reviews and chooses 10-15 words for the next vocabulary activity.
Another approach is to make your list through your own reading or seeing if a vocabulary list exists online. No need to reinvent the whole wheel if it’s not necessary.
Setting up a Self-marking Google Form
The first step is to set up a Google Form. Choose a “Blank Quiz” from the templates.
In the Form’s Settings, toggle to “Immediately after each submission” so it will grade it and provide that number to the student right away. You don’t need to review, unless you want to review!
The one setting that you may choose to change is “Correct Answer” and whether students can see it in their immediate feedback. Since you might set it for students to take multiple times, toggling this option off would increase the challenge on subsequent attempts.
Check out the image below for the default settings I use for this activity. And click here to make a copy of a 10-question quiz template you can customize for your own class vocabulary instruction.
From there it is a matter of setting up the questions using selected vocabulary. Add the word, include a sentence for context – ideally one from the novel itself. This way it’s less about just memorizing the word and more about recognizing meaning in context. Use 10-12 words for the quiz.
Then input 3-4 answer options. Include the correct answer, an antonym, something totally and obviously incorrect. For a fourth option, use an alternate meaning of the word or something closely related but it doesn’t work with the context of the sentence provided.
Next, click “Answer Key” to select the right answer and provide feedback for correct and incorrect answers. For incorrect answers, direct the student back to the sentence itself: “Try again!” or “Try again! Consider the word in the context of the sentence using the other meanings provided.”
Finally, once you’ve set up one question, duplicate it and adjust the word, sentence, and click the correct answer.
A final set up aspect to consider is whether the mark will be recorded or not. Point this out in the instructions: You may take this quiz as many times as you want. You will be provided with a score. This score is not being recorded by your teacher.
Vocabulary is not part of the evaluations in my class so this is always a student self-assessment and learning opportunity. You may decide to have this count as an evaluation with a recorded grade but I have found that it is just as effective with no mark attached.
To save you some time, click here to make a copy of a 10-question quiz template that you can customize.
Using the Google Form in Class
Use specific breaks in the text – chapters or volumes – after which to explore vocabulary.
Provide a timeline for taking the quiz. Upload on Monday, then provide some time in class where students can complete before Friday. The quiz can always be revisited without singling out students who need/want to retake!
If you do plan to record the mark, add this form as an assignment in Google Classroom and voila it will import the mark right away to the gradebook!
So while you’re doing some of your prep reading this summer, you might set-up your own quiz. If you didn’t catch the link earlier in the post, save yourself some time this summer – we all know teacher-summer is SHORT – by making a copy of a 10-question quiz template that you can customize.
For more vocabulary instruction ideas check out:
- This post with 5 ways to gamify vocabulary instruction or
- This post that offers advice on incorporating vocabulary with writing
Come join the conversation about vocabulary instruction on Facebook or Instagram.
