Silent Card Shuffle

Background

The Silent Card Shuffle is a co-operative strategy that has several applications, such as sequencing, classifying, matching and mapping. For matching activities such as relating words with definitions, one should always offer a few more definitions as red herrings. The Silent Card Shuffle employs all six levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy and most of the Multiple Intelligences.

Process

This is a great activity to introduce students to Parts of Speech.

Decide on the material to be addressed, such as Language Building. In this activity, cards have been created representing nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs and articles, prepositions and pronouns. Create a master copy, (as below), make copies of this and cut up the cards, then place them in envelopes for each group. The rule here is that there are 6 cards in each of the 7 categories including the heading.

NOUNS	ADJECTIVES	VERBS	ADVERBS	ARTICLES	PREPOSITIONS	PRONOUNS

Flagpole	Green	Sang	Quickly	the	up	who
Businessman	Jovial	Climbed	Carefully	a	for	he
Umbrella	Tropical	Manoeuvred	Ridiculously	an	in	it
Key	Big	Jumped	Often	the	of	they

A set is given to each group, and now the Silent Card Shuffle begins. It has 5 steps.

Step 1.	Silent Card Classification In teams not exceeding 4, students undertake the task. In this case, students will be required to classify the cards. Here, each column is headed by the category word, such as ‘Noun’, which is written in capitals so it is easily identified by the students. The next card is a picture that relates to the classification, followed by 4 words for each heading. Note that NO TALKING may occur in Step 1.
Step 2.	Challenge, Justify and Refine When finished, and at a signal from the teacher, the group may talk, challenge each other and make changes.
Step 3.	Circle and Observe Leaving one person behind as the Group Representative, the other three students from each group visit the other tables to note the efforts of their peers. They may ask the Group Representative questions and voice their objections, but NO CHANGES may take place.
Step 4.	Return and Refine Students return to their Home table and, based on their observations and discussions, decide if they wish to make further changes.
Step 5.	Teacher Debriefing The teacher displays the ‘answer’ and students self-correct, discussing the changes as they do so. The teacher later debriefs. This particular activity can now be extended with students doing the silent card shuffle again, but this time using the cards to construct the best sensible sentence. Make a game out of the activity, by placing a value written on the underside of each card, such as Articles, Prepositions and Pronouns scoring 1 point, Nouns and Verbs 3 points, and Adverbs and Adjectives 5 points. See which group can set the highest score! This activity can be modified for other language studies, by writing the cards in Spanish or French.

Observation

Should you want to conduct the activity described above the following is required.

Descriptions	Download PDFs Below
Silent Card Shuffle Cards Print & laminate and then cut to make a set of 42 cards	SCS Cards (71 KB)
Layout Guide Students will need this so they know the order in which to place the cards	SCS Layout Guide (11 KB)
Model answer Save this for the end! Remember, “Key” can be a noun as well as an adjective, so praise students for these insights!	SCS Model answer (68 KB)

This is clearly a learner-centered activity allowing teachers to assess levels of competency and understanding. It is an excellent strategy for use after recess as it is a highly tactile activity and involves a lot of movement.

Examples

Senior High

Geography

Cards are made with the names of various countries, flag, main language, population, size, main exports etc.

Using the Silent Card Shuffle, students, working in groups of four, match each country and its selected features.

Extension Activity: Students can then choose one of the countries as the subject for a more detailed report.

Junior High

Mathematics – Ascending and Descending!

Ask students to arrange sets of similar numerical expressions in a given order.

Example: Set up 4 cards with similar expressions on them and one card with Ascending on one side and Descending on the other. Have multiple sets of varying difficulty, putting one set on each table. Silently, students arrange the cards in the set order and move to the next table where they check the work of the group who was there. If they disagree with the work of the previous group they must explain why. They mix up the cards and set the ascending/ descending card as they wish, ready for the next group and move on. Repeat until all groups have worked on all sets.

3 x (5 + 2)

3 + (5 + 2)

3 x 5 + 2

3 + 5 x 2

Ascending

Elementary

Categorizing Card Numbers

Use sets of number cards, putting 5 different cards on each table. Children move around the tables in silent groups arranging the cards using rules nominated by the teacher.

Examples: smallest to largest; odds before evens; larger number, patterns such as smaller number, larger number , smaller number, larger number. Occasionally use rules that cannot be followed for some sets of numbers.

Repeat with collections of alphabet cards with at least one vowel in each set. Children make a new word from the letters, then move on.

General

Distribute picture cards of animals and a habitat chart and ask students to match them up.
Match a picture card with the name of a 2D shape.