WHEEL OF...(Wheel Decide)
This Tech Tip Tuesday, we are keeping it real simple with my students' (new) favorite classroom tool, Wheel Decide! If you've been on my Instagram or Twitter pages this week you've already seen how my students have used this tool to get them excited about their learning objectives! We just cannot get enough.
Last week after my fab team and I had already planned all of our fantastic activities for the week I decided, as I often do, to literally recreate the wheel. Were the activities we had already planned great? YES! Did the activities we had planned meet the learning objectives? Of course. Do I dream about school and my lessons and wake up in the middle of the night, grab my phone and start looking up ways to incorporate the new ideas that just came to me? Yes, doesn't everyone? Clearly I can't be the only one who does this... Right? Well, it was a middle of the night AH HA that led me to discover Wheel Decide, and now my students and I are obsessed.
Wheel Decide is a free website that "was born in 2012 to help us all make decisions when a coin just doesn’t have enough sides." The mission of Wheel Decide is "to control the chaos, to keep the world spinning, and to get everyone to mix it up a little bit."
I first decided to use Wheel Decide last week to engage my students in narrative LEAD writing. Helping my students understand the importance of hooking the reader with a strong lead is very important. I have been teaching lead writing for the past 6 years. Every year I tried to find a way to make this necessary skill more fun for my 4th graders. To help get them interested in practicing the different types of lead writing I utilized Wheel Decide. I wrote different narrative prompts on the wheel slices and we SPUN. Whatever prompt we landed on my students had to write a lead for. The students began chanting, "Wheel of PROMPTS!" all on their own. That was one of those teacher moments where you just want to sit back, cross your arms, smile and say to yourself, "I did a good job today."
We used our Wheel of Prompts on Wednesday for group lead writing. Friday, I gave them an independent lead writing activity where they got to choose their own prompts to for lead writing. Much to my surprise, they collectively begged me to use the Wheel of Prompts instead! I happily obliged them.
Since discovering Wheel Decide I have begun brainstorming so many ways to use this free resource in my classroom.
Last week after my fab team and I had already planned all of our fantastic activities for the week I decided, as I often do, to literally recreate the wheel. Were the activities we had already planned great? YES! Did the activities we had planned meet the learning objectives? Of course. Do I dream about school and my lessons and wake up in the middle of the night, grab my phone and start looking up ways to incorporate the new ideas that just came to me? Yes, doesn't everyone? Clearly I can't be the only one who does this... Right? Well, it was a middle of the night AH HA that led me to discover Wheel Decide, and now my students and I are obsessed.
Wheel Decide is a free website that "was born in 2012 to help us all make decisions when a coin just doesn’t have enough sides." The mission of Wheel Decide is "to control the chaos, to keep the world spinning, and to get everyone to mix it up a little bit."
I first decided to use Wheel Decide last week to engage my students in narrative LEAD writing. Helping my students understand the importance of hooking the reader with a strong lead is very important. I have been teaching lead writing for the past 6 years. Every year I tried to find a way to make this necessary skill more fun for my 4th graders. To help get them interested in practicing the different types of lead writing I utilized Wheel Decide. I wrote different narrative prompts on the wheel slices and we SPUN. Whatever prompt we landed on my students had to write a lead for. The students began chanting, "Wheel of PROMPTS!" all on their own. That was one of those teacher moments where you just want to sit back, cross your arms, smile and say to yourself, "I did a good job today."
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| Students work together to write leads using the prompt from our wheel! |
We used our Wheel of Prompts on Wednesday for group lead writing. Friday, I gave them an independent lead writing activity where they got to choose their own prompts to for lead writing. Much to my surprise, they collectively begged me to use the Wheel of Prompts instead! I happily obliged them.
After seeing how well they responded to using the wheel, I made 2 more wheels to go along with our grammar skill for the week- Subjects and Predicates. I made a Subject Wheel and a Predicate Wheel. We spun the wheels and students had to make the subjects into complete sentences by creating their own predicates and vice versa. They were totally D-E-F, determined, engaged & focused, during the WHOLE activity. Who knew subjects and predicates could be so much fun?
Since discovering Wheel Decide I have begun brainstorming so many ways to use this free resource in my classroom.
- Parts of Speech: Add words and as it spins students have to identify the part of speech
- Character Traits and Feelings: Identify the difference between the 2
- Story Prompts
- Comprehension questions: Spin the wheel for a question to respond to during Reader's Workshop
- Math problems: Add problems (basic or complex) to the spinner for students to complete- If it lands on the same one twice, have them solve in a different way!
- Review for a test
- Vocabulary Words: Define the word that the wheel lands on
I could list 20 more ideas but I think you get the gist! Please comment below with your ideas on how to use Wheel Decide in your classroom!
Enjoy the short tutorial I have created to help you get started with Wheel Decide!
PS: For those of you who do not want your wheel choices to repeat, look below!
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| Wheel Decide "Advanced Options" |
ReplyDeleteCan't decide? Wheel Decide for you! Set your own custom choices and then spin the wheel to make the random decision of lunch, movie, or anything!