Frayer a Friend Fun

Last year I started the school year with the Frayer a Friend activity from The EduProtocol Field Guide Book 1: 16 Student-Centered Lesson Frames for Infinite Learning Possibilities by Marlena Hebern and Jon Corippo. I discovered it last year - possibly from Ditch That Textbook on Twitter and it was a hit!

I decided to try it again this year, realizing I could put my students into breakout rooms and they could create it digitally. Last year I printed the Frayer a Friend template but this year, I just added a text box for them to drag over their friend's name and I made a copy for each of them via Google Classroom. 

We did have to go over the idea of talking to each other and having to chat with each other to get the information but they did a great job and now we try to guess who the secret classmate is everyday. We do 1-2 a day and it's fun to try and deduce who it has based on what we're learning about each other. 

I do have to admit that I got busy with other things and forgot to do Frayer a Friend in one of my classes last week and the students reminded me. Y'all, that really tells me this is a hit. Plus it's a slam dunk for me because I was able to introduce the Frayer model in an easy and fun way. Now when we use it for vocabulary, the'll already be familiar with it. 

Want to know more about Frayer a Friend?

Grab the template from Ditch That Textbook here. Laura Steinbrink shares here how she used Frayer a Friend with Kahoot! And Keith Pedzich blogged about using it here.