Primary Ideas: 4 Pics 1 Word in Your Classroom

Monday, 7 April 2014

4 Pics 1 Word in Your Classroom

On Saturday, I was sat near a child on a train who was playing 4 Pics 1 Word on his father's phone. Then, when I returned home, my other half was requesting help with a puzzle she was stuck on. In the way it often does, my mind struck up and started to ponder how this could be used in a classroom.

Idea 1: Children create their own puzzles for others to try to solve. Possibly using homophones or where the same word (eg stamp or smoking) can fall into a number of different word types:

Idea 2: During a topic of work (eg in geography or science), use the puzzles to introduce or recap vocabulary:

#4pics1word Blog post: http://t.co/PkeSVgQEUq Example: pic.twitter.com/m8hdXpylV3
— PrimaryIdeas (@PrimaryIdeas) April 10, 2014

Idea 3: Use it as a method of introducing new vocabulary.

Note: We have not seen this idea anywhere else. Well done if you've come up with similar. As far as we're aware, creating one's own 4 Pics 1 Word is not copyright - please inform us otherwise if it is. Finally, the pictures used in our example all came from a Creative Commons Image Search - you should do the same (or take your own).

We gave it a go with a Year Five class. The class used iPad devices and the app Pic Collage. With very minimal instructions, here's what they came up with. The examples are also available to download from Dropbox.