By Jessica Castillo, Trevino School of Commmunication and Fine Arts, Laredo, Texas

Buzzing noises rung throughout the classroom as the students from two teams tried to answer the question before the other team could. A noise of disappointment filled half the room as the other side cheered as they won.

“Next question,” blurted the teacher as she tried to be heard above all the noise coming from the students as they tried to get the answers right.

Pre-AP English I instructor Ashley Ramirez uses FreeRice.com as a way to help her students with their grammar and vocabulary skills. Ramirez started to use FreeRice.com last year when AP Art History instructor David Blumberg informed her about it.

FreeRice.com is a website where people can go to improve their language skills and help with world hunger. The way people can help with that is that every time people get an answer right they automatically donate 10 grains of rice to those that need it.

Every time people get an answer wrong no rice is taken away, but they don’t get any either. The website keeps asking the questions players get wrong a few times so they can learn the right answer to the questions, and donate rice.

“I think it’s a creative way to incorporate learning with also helping out world problems,” Ramirez said after asked what she thought of the online game.

“At first I did not tell them it would be a game about practicing their vocabulary and grammar because no student wants to play games about that, but the fact that we were able to use our buzzers and create teams and you know have a competitive atmosphere got the students wanting to play,” she commented.

Some students commented about what they thought about the game.

“I think it’s a really educational game because it helps you learn while having fun and while having to donate enough rice to feed people who can’t have food around the world. So I think it’s a great game,” said freshman, Omar Garcia after playing the game that week.

One of the students commented on how she felt about donating food while playing.

“I feel good about it because I learn a lot and I learn about grammar and vocabulary,” another student said after being asked what she thought about playing the game and donating food.

Garcia said his team didn’t do so well.

“Well. our team did great but we lost for by point which was sad but I mean the questions they develop getting into harder ones so yeah,” Garcia said after asked how his team did.

According to freerice.com, the website is a non-profit website run by the United Nations World Food Programme. The website was founded by John Breer in October 2007. He then donated the website in March 2009 to the United Nations World Food Programme. Also supported is free education to everyone around the world.

The website has two main goals:

1. Provide education to everyone for free.
2. Help end world hunger by providing rice to hungry people for free.

FreeRice.com also supports the World Food Programme (WFP). WFP is the largest humanitarian agency fighting hunger. It is entirely funded by voluntary donations.