Unite. Group. Squad. All of these five-letter words can be used when playing the New York Times Wordle. They also can be used to describe the effect Wordle has on Wilsonville High School students. 

Wordle can be described as a game that gives players six attempts to solve a five-letter word. Sounds tricky right? But not too tricky for Luke Larson, a Junior attending Wilsonville High School. In his words, he describes Wordle as “a fun experience and I like it. It’s a good way to get your brain going and start your morning.”                                  

Larson expands on the benefits Wordle has had on his life saying “I feel like my English essays are full of great five-letter words.”

Group chats can be held together, strung by the magic of Wordle.

“I have a group chat for Wordle and I play every day,” Says sophomore Audrey Counts. “I started playing Wordle in my class because my teacher did it and it was a fun activity, and then I found friends that had similar interests and I asked them if they wanted to make a group chat. We’ve slowly added more people to it since.”

Wordle is a fairly recent game that has taken off and “by the end of January 2022 reached a seven-figure agreement with The New York Times to sell the game to the newspaper,” as said by Naomi Tomki, a journalist from chron.com.

Tomki continued giving background to the game, stating that “Welsh engineer Josh Wardle created Wordle, naming it with a play on his own last name.”

Since the expansion of Wordle as a game, Wilsonville students have been able to connect with one another and use the game as the beginning of a friendship. Like Counts mentioned, she has made new friends through the introduction of Wordle. 

Not only have the students been enthralled with the game, teachers have also been enjoying it and incorporating Wordle in their classes. 

Marina Whiteleather and Hayley Hardison, writers from the website edweek.org, wrote about the inclusion of Wordle in school. “Educators specializing in language and reading saw the value of using it as an instructional tool to illustrate effective phonics and spelling.” 

As Whiteleather and Hardison used tweets from English teachers, praising Wordle and for the teaching opportunities it brought, they found that math teachers also benefited from this game. “Integrating a word game into a reading lesson makes sense, but some teachers aptly made the connection that the game could also be used to demonstrate another subject: math.”

Wordle has given Wilsonville High School students friends, fun, and five-letter words to incorporate into their English essays. It has also brought teachers lesson plans, which is very helpful.

Wordle is a great, fresh, grand, and jazzy activity for everyone to appreciate in their day and is greatly enjoyed within the grounds of Wilsonville High School.