Alyssa Rozines played The New York Times’ Wordle game a lot at home, and after doing so, the Fairfax County, Virginia, teacher had a realization: Her strategy for approaching the puzzle was similar to what she was teaching her third graders.
So last school year, Rozines tried something new. At Waples Mill Elementary School, her third graders would work toward successfully finishing the game every Friday.
She introduced the game during the group’s word study time.
“Because it had to do with spelling patterns, phonics rules, all of those things,” she said.
Now, the approach has become so popular that the students demand a makeup day if they miss a Friday doing the Wordle because schools are closed.
It’s an idea that could help the Northern Virginia school system reach its goal of having every student reading on grade level by the end of third grade.
“What I really learned about students is, no matter what age, they are so competitive and love games,” Rozines said. “And if you could make learning in a fun way — last week they shared that it’s learning, but it’s so fun that you don’t realize it’s learning.”
In class Friday, the group eagerly sat with their markers and dry-erase boards. They recapped the types of words that could be valuable first guesses, such as “audio” or “radio,” because of the number of vowels they have.
Rozines also paused to review the types of syllables words can have, and the rules for considering words that can be most helpful to having success.
And, Rozines recapped, it’s OK if the group doesn’t get the correct word in the designated six attempts.
“I like when I guess the word, and I get it right,” third grader Naledi Kalugi said. “Sometimes, it’s words that I don’t understand, and sometimes, they’re words that I didn’t even know existed.”
The class received keychains, stickers and a video message from Tracy Bennett, the newspaper’s puzzle editor who creates the word for the game each day. In return, they wrote her Wordle-themed cards, which were highlighted on the newspaper’s Instagram page.
During Friday’s class, the group started with the words “dance” and “radio.” Then they tried “first,” before getting the correct word — “trill.”
Afterward, Rozines used the word in a sentence and played a video to teach them what it meant.
“I talked to my friends about it, and I said ‘trill,’ and then I said to them that it’s not a word,” fourth grader Micah Fooman said. “But it actually was a word.”
Students’ competitive spirit isn’t unique to class time. They’re thinking about the game during indoor recess or dismissal too, Rozines said.
The puzzle, Rozines said, helps with decoding words to learn about syllable types and the letters that need to go together, and encoding, the spelling portion.
“They have to wake up, come to school, do all of this work, and if there is a little bright moment that you can put into their day where it’s still purposeful, it’s still meaningful, but it doesn’t feel like you’re just sitting and listening to a teacher, or practicing on your own, or even just with one partner, but you’re turning it into a game,” Rozines said. “It can really engage them and make them fall in love with literacy in a way that maybe they didn’t even know they had.”
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