Hi,
I teach esl in Taiwan. I think the Super Speed worksheets are great. So great in fact that I have been trying to create some by myself for my students. I would like to combine some of the words in Super Speed 1000 with some of the words the students learn in their textbook. That way they will get practice with the most common words and with the words in their textbook (a win-win situation).
Does anybody have any ideas about how to go about this? I tried some on-line randomizers and read a little about using a randomization command with exel. The easiest way seems to be to put some words into windows clipboard and choose them randomly. Only problem is that windows clipboard only lets me enter 24 items.
Any ideas???

I'm getting ready to do my own Super Speed Science Vocabulary game. My only suggestion is keep it simple. The Super Speed 1000 words are words, that when mastered, help students have better fluency and hopefully better comprehension will follow. If you are going to use textbook words, just make your own SuperSpeed game with those words separately. That way you have more than one game to use as a reward for the Score Board....or just a fun activity that helps review or conclude a certain subject area. I don't know if this helps at all, but just keep it simple. Can you upload your Super Speed activity? I'd love to look at it.

I was just thinking....about textbook words......do you have gestures for them? I have seen the toughest vocabulary words be mastered in meaning with just using gestures....and months later, all I have to do is give the gesture, and they know the word. We even did it in a fast charades kind of game.

Good luck!!! Let me know how it all works out!

Mjmcalli,
I think you are right to try to keep it simple and do textbook words seperately.

I want to use this for a new position I will be taking in February so I haven't thought up gestures for the vocabulary and I don't have any worksheets to upload.

What is your purpose for adding the text book words? Do you just want them to recognize these words quickly? Remember the purpose for Super Speed is to learn high frequency words in order to become more fluent readers. I wonder if putting the text book words in this type of game is really what you are looking for. (It may be, and if so just ignore this suggestion.) Maybe putting these words together with a gesture for meaning might be more beneficial. You could make a poster of "science anchor words" and come up with a gesture to help relay meaning. The poster could be left up and reviewed often. You could then create other anchor charts for different subject areas with the most important words from those subjects on the chart and a gesture for meaning with each word. This way your students would get both the word recognition and meaning, but the words wouldn't be combined with the high frequency words of Super Speed.

I feel that gestures are really helpful with getting my kids to understand the meaning, but Ｉgot the idea of adding book words into the super speed worksheets to help them with word recognition. I am teaching English in Taiwan and I've had a lot of kids tell me how horrible they feel when they have an English exam and just can't read the words on it.
Posters on the wall isn't really an option because I go to different classrooms to teach. I've asked the kids homeroom teachers if I could leave posters on the walls, but they didn't seem to happy about it.

That's a shame that the homeroom teacher's aren't on board. I believe they would also notice a big difference in the student's recall. I know what you mean about traveling between schools. I also do that. I'm a reading teacher, working in two different elementary buildings. In one building I have a reading room, which makes using WBT much easier because I can display all the posters. In the second building I travel between 18 classrooms. We have a pod arrangement, so I meet with my groups in their grade levels pod. However, we don't have any wall space because there are huge windows from each classroom looking into the pod.
In your situation of teaching English, I can see how adding the textbook words into a Super Speed game could be beneficial for your students. It might still help to keep the words for each game subject specific so you could have a Super Speed Science and a Super Speed Social Studies (Just a thought). Have a great day and let us know how it all works out for you. Maybe I can get our ESL teacher to follow your progress and try the same type things.

There is a little problem between the English teachers and Chinese teachers at my school, but I won't go into that. I'll just say that I'm putting some work into improving the working relationship between myself and the Chinese teachers I work with.
In addition to working on SuperSpeed worksheet once or twice a week, I found a random word generator web site. I put in some book words and put it up on my smart board and then the kids read (I didn't mix the book words with the high-frequency words and we do it as a whole class activity rather than with partners for some variety). I control the speed with my remote control and I have a printed copy of the words in my hands. When the kids are having some trouble with a certain word, I just make a mark on my printed copy and know that is a word I need to work on. When they are doing well, I can make it go faster and faster. They like this game and I'm sure that getting so many repititions of the book words will really help them out.

That sounds great. I'm glad you have found a way to adapt to suit your needs. Best of luck to you!