Word work vocabulary activities

Welcome (or welcome back) to another installment of my series on teaching vocabulary to gifted students. In previous posts, I wrote about steps to take before staring vocabulary instruction, including assessing what students already know using a quick and easy self-ratings scale. Next, I wrote about strategies for introducing new words and putting a gifted twist on vocabulary instruction.

The whole reason I started researching best practices in vocabulary started when I realized a few things.

• One, I had gifted students to teach and it was obvious that the regular, run-of-the-mill vocabulary materials handed to me by the district would not be sufficient. 
• Two, had the curriculum been challenging enough for my students, I found it dreadfully boring. If I found it boring, my students would have positively died. And I’m not into creating that kind of emergency in my classroom. 
• And three, I knew the importance of vocabulary instruction and it’s far-reaching effects, so it was something I felt I couldn’t afford to get wrong. Thus began my own journey into deeper learning so that I could really make an impact in our classroom, while also injecting some FUN!

This post goes into a little more depth on the components of quality vocabulary instruction, as well as some of the activities that I used with students to engage them in meaningful word learning and purposeful practice. Just as a quick reminder, a child’s vocabulary is a huuuuuuge predictor of academic success in ALL areas.

What the Research Says

One of the best-known researchers in the field of vocabulary instruction is Robert Marzano. In his studies, he found six key steps were the key to better vocabulary instruction. The first three steps are done with the help of the teacher:

1. Teachers should give students an example, description, and/or explanation of the new term. 
2. Students need to restate the explanation, description, or example using their own language.
3. Students should construct a picture, pictograph, or symbolic representation of the term.

(If you hop back to my previous blog post, you will find a free download of a graphic organizer on which students can engage in steps two and three). 

 4.   Periodically, students should engage in activities that help them add to their knowledge of the terms in their vocabulary notebooks.

 5.   Students should be asked to discuss the terms with one another sometimes.

 6.   Students are periodically involved in playing games that enable them to play with terms.

In studies conducted with classrooms using these strategies, it became clear that when teachers engaged their students in alllll of these six practices, students usually showed significant gains in vocabulary learning. 

Other well-known vocabulary researchers, Dr. Kate Kinsella and Dr. Kevin Feldman, point out three things that don’t work in their article, Narrowing the Language Gap: The Case for Explicit Vocabulary Instruction: «looking up words in the dictionary, using written context to determine word meaning, unplanned, extemporaneous vocabulary teaching.»

The acquisition of new vocabulary is essential in terms of overall language advancement. However, there is always a need to review active words from time to time in order to use them fluently in speech. Here, we will present a couple of great vocabulary revision games which will perk up every classroom. Through these games the learners will feel how fun, entertaining and effective the learning process can be.

1. Charades

Charades is a fun and cool revision game. Students need to practice their acting skills to explain the words. This game is extremely easy to organize with minimal advance preparation. The only thing to be ready for is to keep a collection of vocabulary cards for the words you have studied.

The class is divided into two teams. Each team member takes turns acting out one of the words from the vocabulary set and explains it by acting out the word. If his or her own team can’t guess the word, the opposite team gets the chance to guess it. Each right answer equals one point.

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2. Pictionary

Pictionary is also an  entertaining game to play for vocabulary review. The rules are similar to those of charades except that instead of acting out the word, it is drawn on the board.

3. Bingo

Bingo can serve as a good revision game. From my experience, most of the groups/students like playing bingo because it gives them the chance to  reflect on the words they have digested.

Students are given a blank bingo board and are asked to put the review words into the squares randomly. The teacher puts the active words in a hat or a box, takes them out one by one and defines them. If the student has a word corresponding to the definition, he crosses it out on his bingo board. When someone gets five squares in a row, they should shout, “Bingo!”

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4. A memory style

A memory style card game can be another effective way for reviewing vocabulary. It requires some preparation before the game starts. For each word to be reviewed, one card should have the target vocabulary word and another card should have the definition of the word. You also need to have a big playing grid where you put the words and their definitions face down.

Each person turns over two cards each turn trying to find a match. If the cards do not match, he turns them over again and the next person tries to find a match. If he succeeds, he keeps the cards and gets an additional turn. The player with the highest number of cards at the end of the game wins.

The game can be modified even further. If you have accumulated enough synonyms or antonyms to the target vocabulary, you can practice matching target words to their antonyms or synonyms.

5. Categories

Categories is another awesome revision game which will make students energized and empowered. What they need for the game is to draw 4-6 columns on their paper and write a category at the top of each column. Categories fit the topics covered during the course. For example, if you have covered the business topics of Marketing, Work and Leisure, Ethics, Human Resources, Travel, you write these topics as categories.

You time the students and ask them to write as many words as possible under each category. As a further modification, choose a random letter and write it on the board. Give students enough time to write down a word for each category that starts with that letter.

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6. Letter scramble

Letter scramble will make students really competitive and super fast. What you need is to take a list of words that your students have recently learned and write a scrambled version of each on the board. Students need to unscramble the words on their paper. The first one to finish deciphering all the words wins.

7. Stop the bus

Stop the bus is a cool game my students adore.  I usually divide the class into 2-3 teams. One student from each team. This student sits on a chair facing his peers. Then from behind the student in the hot seat, show the other students a word from the lesson. The other students must try to describe what the word is without saying the actual word. And the student in the hot seat must guess.

The student who guesses the word shouts out “stop the bus” and checks the word with the teacher. If correct, the team gets a point. If wrong, other teams have the chance to guess the word by writing their versions on a piece of paper and passing the papers to the teacher.

8. Puzzles

Puzzles  is another cool and easy tool to review the material in an effective way. What I like about this way of vocabulary revision is that students can work in pairs or groups while trying to find words matching the definition in the crosswords. They learn by listening to each other, cooperating to find the right answer. In this way, they both review the material and improve their teamwork skills.

Follow this link to get templates of different types of puzzles.

We also recommend watching a video with Alexei Konobeev. The speaker shared games to help your students remember new vocabulary. These games do not require special training and you can adapt them to any age and level.

We hope that all these games would serve their best to liven your vocabulary revision sessions and make them more meaningful and effective.

Which of these games have you tried? Which ones have you picked up for your next revision slot?