Let the Wheel Decide

Yesterday I received my latest newsletter from Joshua Cabral, a World Language teacher in Massachusetts who operates the website World Language Classroom. In it, he talked about a website called Wheel Decide that lets you create free wheels of chance like the one you might see on the game show Wheel of Fortune or at a roulette table in a casino. For example, if you don’t know what to have for dinner, you may spin a wheel like the one below to choose what to eat that night.

I have nothing but respect for Joshua, who is a member of many professional language organizations and an engaging speaker and presenter. But, he is much more interested in getting students to speak in class than I am, so it came as no surprise to me that he suggested using Wheel Decide for student output activities. As a comprehensible input (CI) teacher, I am more concerned with input than with output, but the idea of using this wheel intrigued me as a way to inject some novelty into my classroom instruction. I have started implementing it in class in a few ways that you may find useful in your own classes.

In my classroom, I start off by talking about the day, date, and weather. Recently a French teacher colleague said on Twitter that she includes a discussion about the weather in a French-speaking country as part of her opening routine. I thought this could be a great way to talk about French-speaking countries and geography, and I decided to use this wheel to take this activity one step further in my French class this morning.

I created a wheel with the names of the capital of different French countries and overseas départements. Here’s what it looks like:

I started class today as I do normally by discussing the day, date and weather. Then I let a student come up to spin the wheel to choose which French-speaking region we would talk about. Today the wheel landed on Basse Terre, the capital of Guadeloupe. This city was unfamiliar to my students, so I showed them where it was on Google Maps (My students especially like using the Google Maps feature where you can drop the human figure found on the right into an area and get the street view). So as we talk about the day, date, and weather, we also can learn a bit about the French-speaking world without having to do a straight-up geography lesson.

I also like to do games on Fridays in my class, so I came up with a Wheel Decide to choose which (low/no prep) game to play that day (By the way, I get most of my game ideas from Keith Toda’s fantastic blog. Click on links under “Post Reading. Amy Marshall also has a ton of games on her blog, DMS Spanish. Look for “No/Low Output Games.”). Here’s what my wheel looks like:

Lastly, if you read my blog, you may remember that I don’t really like the unpredictability of Storyasking, since so often things can get out of control by students either shouting out inappropriate answers or not participating at all. Sometimes in class I use dry erase cubes when I ask a story, where I have students write possible ideas on the cubes which we roll to determine our answer. I am also planning on using Wheel Decide to help choose possible suggestions in class as well. I’ll let you know how it goes.