Whatchamacallit: Making Words Stick

The Ultimate Word Work Project

The perplexed faces of students walking by our Grade 4 display board could not be a better affirmation of the great work that happened in our classroom. The 4’s were in the middle of a read-aloud of Andrew Clements’ Frindle, and they were learning to make words stick.

In the Whatchamacallit Building Outside the Blocks (BOB) project, students become wordsmiths, marketers, and meaning-makers. Their challenge? To invent an entirely new word and then make it “real”. Using the media and marketing tools explored, students design strategies to launch their creation into the world. They craft slogans, visuals, and campaigns that give their word life, purpose, and a chance to spread.

Dictionary skills come alive when students create their own word and write a proper dictionary entry for it, complete with pronunciation, part of speech, definition, and an example sentence. Through this process, they learn that every word carries structure, sound, and story. We activate schema around syllables, phonetics, and alphabetical order while also exploring parts of speech, context clues, font choice, and media literacy. It’s word work reimagined through creativity, design, and purpose.

I came up with Whatchamacallit many years ago. At the time, I was reading The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell while planning a novel study on Frindle. The idea came about organically. I had seen “invent a word” assignments before, but I wanted to take it further by adding an audience and a media dimension. One of our curriculum expectations asks students to “create media texts for a variety of purposes,” and this project brings that expectation to life. Each student invents a word, gives it meaning, and creates media to “sell” it.

So much has changed since I first introduced the project. The word viral has entered my students’ vocabulary and now, that’s their goal! If they want their words to go viral, though, they quickly realize there’s marketing to be done. Words only get added to dictionaries through use, so the class makes a conscious effort to use one another’s creations in conversation and writing. I even wrote a story that included all their Whatchamacallit words to model how invented language comes alive in context.

A great example of a campaign to make a word stick and become “real” is the levidrome. It started in 2017 with a father’s goal, to make the word invented by his son, Levi, a “real” word. By inviting students around to use the word, they helped make it “real”.

In 2025, that word became part of the dictionary of Canadianisms, and the family continues to market the word to ensure that Oxford will join in a list it among the dictionary entry words one day. My students participated in helping to make the levidrome “real”.

It’s thrilling to watch how creative students become with this project. Students made videos, songs, and advertisements to promote their new words. This BOB project is a formative learning experience designed to help students build skills, become more self-directed, and strengthen our class community.

Whatchamacallit isn’t just about wordplay; it’s about understanding how ideas spread, how language evolves, and how creativity connects us. When students realize that the words we use shape how we think, they begin to understand that they can shape language, too. Learning the difference between connotation and denotation helps them grasp that words carry both meaning and emotion that what words say and how they feel both matter. That’s where the real power of language lies.

Watching students light up when their word “sticks” is a reminder that learning isn’t just about understanding language; it’s about owning it and sharing it with the world. When kids learn that they can name the world, they start to see their voices as part of the story that defines it.

In the end, Whatchamacallit isn’t just about making up words — it’s about making meaning. My students are realizing that words have weight, and that they can impact how we think, feel, and connect. Watching them play with language reminds me that words don’t just describe the world, they help us build it.

In the book Frindle Mrs. Granger, Nick’s teacher, explains how words come to be, a perfect reminder that language, like learning, is always evolving through the people who use it. Every time I think about this project, I’m reminded of how joyful and meaningful learning can be when curiosity and creativity collide. The Whatchamacallit might start as a word project, but it ends as something much more. It’s a celebration of how kids’ voices and ideas can shape the world around them, one word at a time. As Dumbledore says in Harry Potter: Words are…our most inexhaustible source of magic.