Fun writing with words grid game

FUN WRITING WITH WORDS GRID GAME

Most of students think that writing is very difficult, because they have to express not only ideas in the form of writing, but they have to pay attention also to the sentence structure and coherence. This condition becomes more complicated when they have to write something in English. This condition is also supported by the low reading habit of Indonesian students compared with another country. Therefore, they have limit information or input that can be used as a topic or ideas in writing activity, in other words their background knowledge is very poor. That is why, students usually get lazy in learning writing skill, they tend to be interested in the form of oral activity that is simpler and easier.

To solve such kind of problem, teachers can use certain technique that can arouse students to join and to be interested in writing tasks or exercises. We have to provide challenging and attractive tasks which can explore cognitive, affective and psychomotor factors. Teachers have to facilitate the process of learning in the classroom, so that they are not getting bored studying in the classroom. Here, I would like to share my own experience to teach fun writing in the classroom using word grid. The procedures are as follow:

1.      Teachers choose one topic of lesson objective, for example recount text, in this type of text we study about constructing sentence in the form of past tense.

2.      Teachers introduce some verbs related to the topic in the form of past, like visited, enjoyed, swam, went, arrived, etc.

3.      Teachers explain how to construct sentences using verb two form to tell their past activities or experiences. (note; this game is in the form of affirmative sentence)

4.      Teachers make a grid of words which consist of subject, verb past tense, object and adverb of time. (look at the picture below)

5.      Teachers explain what the students must do using those words in the grid. Teachers explain that students have to make sentences as many as possible using the words in the grid with time limitation for each group or student. (note: each word can be used more than once in different sentence)

6.      Group or student which has the most sentences will win the challenge and get a prize.  

7.      At last, teachers give feedback and conclusion about the activity about how to construct sentences using verb two to tell the past events. Teachers also can improve the form of sentences, for example negative and interrogative forms, or as we need to practice writing in simple way.

Example of word grid game

Make sentences as many as possible using these words, for each word you can use  more than once.

She	He	They	You	I
Mr. Thomas	My family	The students	Dina and Dini	My friends
Swam	Visited	Played	Enjoyed	Wrote
Studied	Sang	Sat	Did	Had lunch
Had dinner	Watched	Saw	Read	Bought
Drank	Went	Stayed	Listened	Borrowed
A magazine	Football	Doll	The scenery	A letter
English	Math	TV	Movie	A homework
To music	To radio	Orange juice	Ice cream	To the zoo
Fruits	Prambanan temple	Yogya palace	At the hotel	At cinema
In the swimming pool	In the yard	In the restaurant	To Sarangan lake	At home
Yesterday	Last holiday	Last week	Last night	Last month

            :Subject             :Verb 2               :Object                :Adverb of time

Example: He played football in the yard yesterday