“Which One Doesn’t Belong” is one of my all time favorite activities to practice vocabulary in my classroom! It can be used in lower elementary all the way though to high school! It can be as easy or as challenging as you make it! Best part? “Which One Doesn’t Belong” can be used in all subject areas as pre-assessment, formative assessment or for review before a summative assessment!
“The idea, as the name implies, is that students look at a group of terms or phrases and pick out the one that does not belong.” (Carleton, L., & Marzano, R., 2010, p. 45).
The game, “Which One Doesn’t Belong”, supports literacy growth because students have to rely on their understandings of each word to try to find a common theme or connection and then rule out the one that does not belong. Students are working on the skill set of categorizing and reviewing definitions all at once!
I often use it as a review game for the week, so I include questions in language arts, social studies, science, etc. I create a PowerPoint, with each question on it’s own slide. Students get out their whiteboards and get ready to record their answers. I read out the question and each choice. Students write their response on their whiteboard (A, B, C or D) and when the countdown is over, they hold their boards up for everyone to see. Now I can see who is on the right track and who has misconceptions that I need to address. The beauty of the game is in the discussion. If students have different answers, I ask them to defend their positions. There are often times where I have thought students had the wrong answer, but upon their defense, they have come up with a different connection that I didn’t think of!