This Teacher Playing Wordle With Her Third Graders Is The Energy We Need This Year

Anyone with a cell phone and a heart loves to play Wordle. The game that skyrocketed in popularity during the pandemic has lost neither its shine nor its fun, and over 2 million people around the country log in to play the simple word game each day (including me).

But while most adults love it for its clean design, fun strategies, and result-sharing features, one third grade teacher realized that it’s also a perfect game for new readers who are working on their spelling, phonics, and vocabulary.

Bri Marie Jackson, who often posts about teaching, uploaded a video of her classroom of 9 year olds playing Wordle together on the big screen. And besides being enriching, it is just so adorable and emotionally buoying.

“Play wordle with my students as our favorite brain break when we have extra time,” she captions the video.

“Give me a five-letter word,” she begins, before getting the suggestion of “SLEPT.”

As the S lights up green (indicating that the letter is in the correct position) and the P lights up yellow (indicating that the letter appears in the word somewhere else), the room erupts in cheers.

The kids then make more guesses, with guidance from Bri, who helps them understand the rules and strategies of the game. During the next few turns, the kids have fun while also inadvertently learning about vowel sounds, word structure, and spelling.

At the same time, the kids are yelling out their best ideas and being super-duper supportive of each other. At one point, they’re chanting SWAP while Bri enters their next guess.

Finally on guess five, the class decides on SHARP — and when the all-green word appears on the screen, everyone falls out of their chairs cheering. Why do I suddenly have hope for our planet’s future?

Down in the comments, people were loving the energy of the kids (and the idea of Wordle in the classroom).

“Turns out all I need in life is to just play along with 3rd graders solving Wordle,” one person commented.

And everyone loved how supportive the classroom was.

“We all need the ‘that’s a good one’ kid in our life,” another wrote.

If you need more Wordle in the classroom content, don’t worry. Tiktok has lots of teachers using the game as a tool in their classroom. And in February of last year, one teacher, Miss Hunter, caught her class getting the word right on the first guess. Look how far teamwork can get you!