My Spin on The Fast and The Curious EduProtocol

When working with English learners, or any learner, building vocabulary is essential. Growing up in the 1980s and 1990s, I was usually given a list of terms and told to look them up in the dictionary. For students today, this simply will not do. Today's kids do not know the world without the internet and have likely not used dictionaries or glossaries much. Kids nowadays are wired differently than my generation and need a different approach to building vocabulary. To this end, one of my favorite strategies is the Fast and Curious EduProtocol.

Fast and Curious uses different formative assessment apps such as Quizizz, Kahoot, GoFormative, Socrative, etc. to gamify vocabulary and essential skill building. The idea is to get students interacting with vocabulary and or essential skills often with multiple repetitions daily and weekly.

My spin on the Fast and Curious EduProtocol smashes together Quizizz, Quizlet and whiteboards. In a 50 minute class period, I want students interacting individually and collaboratively multiple times in a digital and analog manner. Take a look below at the structure of this activity.

Prep (20 minute)
- Create study set in Quizlet. Be sure to include images with each term. Quizlet provides suggested images that are Creative Commons.
- Use same terms and definitions in Quizlet to create a quiz in Quizizz. Be sure to use same images too. (Copy image address from Quizlet and paste into each Quizizz question)
- Post links to Quizlet study set, Quizlet Live and Quizizz in Google Classroom

Facilitation:
- Students login to Google Classroom and open Quizlet study set link
- Quizlet Solo: Students get approximately 7-10 minutes to interact solo with the study set and play the games to become quasi-familiar with the terms. Students may take notes during this time if they choose.
- Quizlet Live: Students will play three rounds of Quizlet Live (10-15 minutes) to collaboratively interact with the terms and have opportunities to begin speaking and listening.
- Quizizz: Students will play Quizizz to assess initial understanding of terms. They will replay this quiz throughout the week to show growth and mastery (10 minutes)
- Speed Sketchnotes: Use whiteboard walls, personal whiteboards or paper/pencil to facilitate speed sketchnoting. Put kids in groups of 2-3. One partner is always the scribe. The other partner(s) explain the scribe an assigned term and have them sketch on the whiteboard or paper. Rotate jobs for each term. Each term should be given roughly two minutes. Due to time constraints, assign only the 4-5 most important terms. (10-15 minutes)

In a 50 minute period, students will have gotten 6-10 repetitions with the vocabulary terms. The first time you attempt this multi-layered activity, expect some hiccups. As students get used to the flow throughout the year, it will improve and you will see students beginning to enjoy vocabulary and essential skill building.