What is Freerice?
Freerice is a non-profit website that is owned by the United Nations World Food Programme with two main goals in mind:
1.       To provide education to everyone without a fee.
2.       To help end world hunger by providing rice to hungry people, also cost free.

Not only can this program be used by teachers in the classroom but it is made available to students at home with access to a computer and internet. It is even now available on Twitter and Facebook.

Background Information
Freerice was founded in October 2007 and since then has helped many children with education as well as feeding millions of people since the game has launched with help from sponsors. Each time a game is played and you answer a question correctly, Freerice donates 10 grains of rice help end hunger. No further action is due on your part except to keep playing and answer the next question. You may join or create groups (such as a classroom) to track the rice that has been earned and donated.

What different subjects can you utilize on Freerice?
Freerice helps students improve their knowledge in content areas such as humanities, English, math, chemistry, geography, learning other languages, and human anatomy. It is even useful in helping one study for tests such as the ACT and SAT. Many teachers use to help enrich their students vocabulary while helping to end world hunger.

Here are some links on some frequently asked questions about Freerice and what it is exactly:
http://freerice.com/about/faq
http://freerice.com/about

We have also provided a link to a short YouTube clip with some information on Freerice that you can show to your classroom to get them engaged and ready to begin the program!!

http://youtu.be/j22rxwRE328

Application to Teaching and Learning
Freerice provides many ways for teachers to have students not only feel like they are helping fight world hunger but also use the tools given on the site to get extra practice on their vocabulary - even words they may have not learned but they could use their schema to try and get the correct answer. Some examples are...

1. Every time a student matches up a synonym of a word to the word given from the site then the website will give the student a harder word the next time. If the student struggled with that harder word, then they will go back down a level in vocabulary. By having an assessment like this, that isn’t actually graded by anyone, it guides the students to be competitive with themselves while learning. They get rewarded with the satisfaction of knowing that every word they get correct will go towards giving 10 grains of rice, per correct word, to a family in need. This is a great tool that the website provides in order to build on student vocabulary at any age.
An example of how this works is below with a link attached to where to go in order to get the kids started on building their vocabulary.

Example: (The correct word is in bold - if the students don’t click the correct word then they will be given an easier word than glitter. If they click the correct answer then they will be given a hard word than glitter.)

glitter means:
hearten
sparkle
clout
retain

http://freerice.com/#/english-vocabulary/1585

2. Another great tool that the website provides is that teachers can create groups for their class(es). Once the group is created the teacher can hold tournaments, set class assignments based on a specific content area, and begin creating lesson plans based off of these tools given. The instructions on how to get your class signed up on the site is directed to you from the link below.

http://freerice.com/teachers

3. Freerice also helps with vocabulary in five other languages besides English: German, Spanish, French, Italian and Latin. This is also a great tool for language learners and teachers who specifically teach a language for any age group. The format is the same as the first example discussed above but in another language.

For example (French):

grau means:
gray
sixty
dry
ten

If you are looking for a short addition to your homework assignments for your language learners then follow the link below and it will guide you to all the subjects. Find “Language Learning” first. Then, below that lists all the languages, besides English, that you can use to improve your students vocabulary. Each link will bring you to a vocabulary assessment for whatever language you choose.

http://freerice.com/category




Tutorial information:

Freerice (at www.freerice.com) is a non-profit website that is owned by and supports the United Nations World Food Programme. The website has two goals: to provide free education to all users and to help end world hunger by providing rice to those without food. Freerice is sponsored by many generous advertisers on the website

In order to use Freerice, type in the following URL into your browser: www.freerice.com. You will arrive the Freerice homepage, which immediately shows a multiple choice question. The default subject is English vocabulary. It will show a vocabulary word and four possible definitions underneath the word. To use the Freerice tool, simply click on the definition that you believe fits the provided word. For every answer you get correct, Freerice will donate 10 grains of rice to the United Nations World Food Program. The instructions are listed to the right of the playing field as well.

The bar on the right shows how many questions you have answered correctly and how many grains of rice have been donated as a result. The bar below playing field shows how many grains of rice were donated the previous day. At the top right of the playing field, there is a button marked “New Subjects!” This button allows you to change the subject from the default. There are many options, including math, chemistry, test prep, and foreign languages. Each subject has subsets of topics. In addition to topics, you can also change the language of the entire website by selecting a new language from the scroll-down window in the top right corner. The default is English, but they offer four other languages.

If you click on “Sign Up,” you can create a free account so that you can keep track of your scores and the number of grains of rice that have been donated in your name. You can sign up individually or as a group, which would be useful for school classrooms. At the very top of the page, there are two buttons called “Rice!” and “Groups” that show statistics and high scores of users. There is also a scrolling bar at the bottom that shows the most current high scores.

If you type www.freerice.com/blog into your URL or click on the article names on the bottom left, you can go to the Free Rice Blog, which has many postings of articles and short essays. It includes news about Free Rice, information about the importance of the program, and spotlights of different countries and classrooms that use Free Rice. You can also hit the “Spread the Word” bottom on the top right of the page, which will take you to www.freerice.com/share_us. This page gives instructions on how to “share” Free Rice within the blogosphere or on your Facebook page. It has many options for spreading the word using social media.

Finally, if you go to https://www.wfp.org/videos/freerice-20-feeding-minds-while-feeding-hungry?utm_source=freerice.com&utm_medium=front_page_banner, you can watch a video of the United Nations World Food Programme distributing the rice that has been donated by users on this site.
Also, here are some example lesson plans I found using Free Rice if that helps us at all:

Think Twice for Rice:
http://www.educationworld.com/a_lesson/dailylp/dailylp/dailylp116.shtml

Flags of the World:
http://cdn.wfp.org/freerice/6deg/lessonplans/lesson_Flags.pdf?icn=wfw&ici=lesson

All images were found on Google Images.