Fun Vocabulary Games to Improve Literacy

Will Hack, 2009 Verbal Volley Showdown Scholarship Tournament Champion, has been named a National Merit Scholarship Finalist.  This news comes as no surprise to anyone who witnessed his performance at the March 1st Verbal Volley Showdown vocabulary tournament at Maryville University. He clearly demonstrated mastery of high frequency SAT and ACT vocabulary, as well as a knack for word play.  We are glad for his continued academic success. Congratulations Will!

Mindfull Games will have a booth at the ASHA Schools Conference in Kansas City, MO July 17-19 2009. Speech pathologists should visit us for information about using Verbal Volley as an evidence-based individual therapy activity, or as a fun classroom teaching tool for literacy, vocabulary and word finding. See how you can fit social word play with high frequency and concept words into your RTI protocols. NSSLHA members who want to prepare for the GRE can challenge each other to play Other Wordly, a.k.a. The Verbal Volley for College Prep. See you in Kansas City!

On Sunday, March 1st 2009, 21 high school students from across the St. Louis region raced to name synonyms and antonyms to win college funds in the first Verbal Volley Showdown scholarship tournament. The students competed one-on-one while playing the SAT/ACT prep version of Verbal Volley. Three single elimination rounds narrowed the field to three finalists. The finalists played a round robin tournament on the stage of the Maryville University Auditorium, while four judges moderated play and awarded points. Mindfull Games awarded scholarship funds of $1000, $700 and $500 to the top finishers. Maxine Clark of Build-A-Bear Workshop donated student bears and gift certificates to the six semi-finalists.  The scholarship winners were: Champion- Will Hack, senior at Parkway Central High School, Second Place-Kelly Lamarche, sophomore at Lafayette High School, and Third Place-Antonio Sanchez, senior at Maplewood-Richmond Heights High School. Each student will be able to apply the funds to the college or university of his or her choice. Mindfull Games and Maryville University sponsored the tournament. “I loved the tournament,” said Champion Will Hack. “Words are my strong suit…I will be attending Michigan State in the fall to study political science. Kelly and Antonio were amazing. In another world, I would have lost to both of them.”

Kelly Lamarche, the youngest finalist, plans to study animal sciences or pre-veterinary studies.  Kelly said the tournament was “a lot of fun!  Preparing for this tournament was the first time I have done any practice for the ACT and SAT at home.  My vocabulary has increased tremendously, and I find that I understand the texts much more, not only for my English class, but also for my social studies and science classes.”

1. The Brain Freeze card scoring will change with the shortened tournament play period. At the end of a preliminary match, the possession of the Brain Freeze card will cost a player two points.

2. We suggest that the player who does not hold the Brain Freeze card at the beginning of the second Brain Freeze round allow the holder of the Brain Freeze to be first to try to name a word to get rid of it. This will prevent a player from wasting a word that could be used later in the Brain Freeze round.

3. Hyphenated words and words with separable parts that appear together as one entry in a dictionary or thesaurus are acceptable. Examples would be “run-on” and “pick up.”

1. There will be no challenge feature in the tournament play. The judge will either award a card or not.

2. If a judge disagrees with a player’s word choice, that player may use the word in context and the target word in the same context once. The judge will then make a final ruling. An example: In the synonym round, the target word is “save.” A student names “except” as a synonym. The judge disagrees. The player says, “I ate all of the cookies except one.  I ate all of the cookies save one.” The judge sees that the usage is correct and awards the card to the player.

3. Each preliminary round will end after 30 minutes of playing time or after the completion of the four basic rounds of the game (synonym, synonym Brain Freeze, antonym, antonym Brain Freeze), or when the card stack is used up, whichever comes first.

4. If neither player wants to offer an antonym or synonym for a target word, the word is set aside and not looked up.

5. The judge will allow a player to hold the Brain Freeze card for up to 20 seconds while attempting to recall a synonym or antonym.

6. For all matches, the tiebreaker will be a sudden death Brain Freeze round with a randomly chosen word from the deck.  A coin toss by the judge will decide whether antonyms or synonyms will be used.

7. The three finalists will play a round robin format. Each final match will consist of only two rounds and will use either synonyms or antonyms. The judge will toss a coin to decide which one.

Students will need to bring enough food to sustain them throughout the tournament on Sunday. It is spring break at Maryville University, and the Campus Food Service and Kaldi’s are closed. Mindfull Corporation will provide some refreshments in the registration area, but there are no meals available on campus March 1st.

Students who are competing in our March 1st tournament must register with one parent or guardian present. Please contact Kristin Edmonds at 314-324-8686 as soon as possible if you have difficulty with this requirement.

Please note that registration for our Verbal Volley Showdown Scholarship Tournament has been moved to 11:30 am in the Auditorium Atrium. Play will begin at 12:00 pm at various locations on campus, so be sure to check-in before 11:45 to allow time to find your room.

Thank you to all of the players who showed up for our tournament practice on Feb. 14th. Your comments were very helpful to our planning process. We would like to make some suggestions for players to keep in mind while preparing for the March 1st tournament.

1. Remember that the Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Thesaurus is the text the judges will reference only when they deem it necessary. The judges will have studied the tournament words from the thesaurus ahead of time. That being said, the judges are free to admit any word as correct if they have had real-life experiences which support the correctness of the word choice. This is because words are arbitrary symbols which gain meaning through their use.
2. Keep in mind that a true synonym or antonym for a word must be the same part of speech as the word in question. It must function in place of that word in a sentence. If the word in play is a verb, the synonym or antonym must be a verb with the same tense as the target word. Some words are used as more than one part of speech. For example, the word “love” may be used as a noun or a verb. One player may say “abhor” and another may say “hatred” when naming antonyms for “love”, and both players would be correct.
3. Yes, you may add or subtract prefixes and suffixes to create antonyms! If your word is “appropriate,” you may use “inappropriate” as an antonym.
4. Our judges are very well-educated people who love words. That being said, they are from a different generation than yours.  In this tournament, it is probably best to avoid using slang words which are not used frequently by your parents and grandparents. Slang tends to be age-group specific. Even if you correctly use a slang word, if your judge hasn’t heard it, you will not get credit. We encourage you to play our game using slang words with your peers after the tournament.
5. Some people find that an easy way to name multiple antonyms for one word is to think of one antonym for the word and then name synonyms for that antonym. Find out which retrieval technique your brain uses best for antonyms.

As we have been made aware of slow mail delivery within some school districts, we have extended our  March 1st Verbal Volley Showdown tournament application deadline to February 20th, 2009. Please RSVP to krisedmonds@mindfullgames.com if you would like to attend our optional practice session on February 14th, 2009. We will now accept application forms at the practice session. Applications are processed in the order received.