How I Use the Wheel of Names to Engage My Students
Early on in my teaching career in Japan I noticed that my junior high school students would hesitate if I called on them directly yet would somehow magically do what they were told if they lost at rock-scissors-paper. I eventually started trying out other ways to randomly choose students, such as pulling names from a hat, making cards with numbers, or just randomly moving my finger up and down a name list.
Making name or number cards takes some time to prepare – and if one card is lost the whole deck becomes unusable in this context – while the latter isn’t really as random as it seems. I was talking about this with another ProGen teacher the client-school where I am teaching this year, Rae Clark, and she introduced me to the following website: Wheel of Names.
The Wheel of Names is quite simple. First, just cut and paste a list of names into the text box to populate the Wheel. Then spin the Wheel and it will slow down and stop at a name. There is a cheer from the website, and magically, just like rock-scissors-paper, the chosen person (usually) does what they have been asked to do, whether to answer or ask a question or come to the front for a presentation. The site gives you the option to remove the name that has been chosen, ensuring the same person isn’t called on three times and enabling the teacher to try to call on everyone in class at least once.
Users can also place photos in the Wheel in addition to text. An instructor in the following video pastes in images for a vocabulary review and prompts for students to tell a story. He also inserts pictures of celebrities for a game of two truths and one lie.
One concern I always have in using private websites is showing advertising in class. This site is supported by ads, but you can easily close them. The FAQ even provides advice on how to use an adblocker. As the website itself is a fork of an open-source project, if you are technically savvy enough you can put it on your own server, which the FAQ also suggests. Overall, the site seems very privacy-aware and I am comfortable using it in my classes and recommending others to use it.
I have successfully used the Wheel of Names to randomly select individual students with both junior and senior high school classes. I have also asked students to come up with a group name. Then, I put those names into the Wheel to select groups to come to the front of the class to practice and present a skit. I am looking forward to trying out more creative uses of the Wheel in the future. If you have any ideas or success stories using the Wheel I’d love to hear from you.
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