Word workshop for teachers

Make vocabulary workshop fun and engaging using different games and activities that will keep students engaged and invested in learning! Below are games and activities that I have been using in my English class with available PowerPoint templates to give you an idea how they work. I hope you would find them useful in your class.

Ready-to-play games, printables and engaging projects are available at the Store.

This game is based off of the game BOGGLE in which players attempt to find words in sequences of adjacent letters.

The purpose of the game is to discover as many words as possible within a jumbled square of twenty five randomly selected letters. A valid word can only be formed if each letter is contiguous (i.e. side-by-side, above or below, or on the diagonal) with the next, and no letter position can be used more than once in any given word.

Game Type: Individual, Pair, Group

Download Boggle (18050 downloads)

Break the ice and warm up vocabulary workshop with this funny brain teasers which is one of vocabulary activities enjoyed by kids and all ages! You can also use this as a warm up for a full lesson or maybe to fill in the remaining time at the end of class. Brain teasers are good to stimulate students to think quick and critically!

Game Type: Individual, Team

Download Brain Teasers (30761 downloads)

This is like a Hot Seat 2.0 game where the person in the hot seat has to guess what’s behind him. This time however, they need to guess as many words as they can from a chosen category within a limited period of time! Fun right?!

Game Type: Pair, Group

Download Categories Guessing Game (28403 downloads)

In this simple activity, students are shown a word, phrase or sentence that disappears in 2 seconds! They need to remember what they saw and write them down on a mini-whiteboard or paper. The fastest team to show the correct answer wins the round.

Game Type: Individual, Team

Download Disappearing Words (12256 downloads)

Students are shown different pictures and they need to take the first letter from each picture to form the mystery word. This is a fun activity that tests students vocabulary!

Game Type: Individual, Team

Download First Letter Game (12873 downloads)

The teacher calls out a student to give 5 things on a given category in 30 seconds! This is one of the best ESL vocabulary activities for quickly reviewing the lesson.

Game Type: Individual

Download Give Me Five (16076 downloads)

Each team makes a line near the board, then one student per team comes up to the white board and writes a word. The next student has to use the last letter of the word on the board to make another word. At the end of the game, the team with the longest word snake with all the words joined up wins the game.

Game Type: Team

Download Word Snake (9006 downloads)

The teacher slowly removes the squares while students take turn guessing what is the picture hidden behind it. The student who guesses the right word wins the game.

Game Type: Individual

Download Hidden Pictures (15164 downloads)

One student will help the person in the “hot seat” to guess the secret image behind him/her before the time runs out! This is a classic way to develop word association and description.

Game Type: Pair, Team

Download Hot Seat (13888 downloads)

This is a matching type activity where each team is given a set of cards. Students spread out the cards on the table face down and take turns picking up a card and finding its pair.

Game Type: Team

Download Pelmanism (7856 downloads)

This is a classic pair work where one student is the runner and the other is the writer. The runner reads the sentence posted in the classroom walls and runs back to the writer and dictate the message. This is a really fun and loud activity that students will enjoy!

Game Type: Pair

Download Running Dictation (9992 downloads)

Students form a group of four and number themselves from 1-4. Students will all “sleep” by putting their heads down. When they hear the teacher calls their own number, they will “wake up” and have to remember what they see. After 4 rounds, everyone “wakes up” and puts the word or sentence together.

Game Type: Team

Download Sleeping Pandas (9412 downloads)

A tongue twister is a series of words or sounds that are usually repetitive and are difficult to pronounce quickly and correctly. Most English language teachers use tongue twisters to develop the students pronunciation and accent. Sometimes, we use tongue twisters just for the sheer fun of doing it. I often get my students to memorize this and ask them to say it out loud in class as a group and in pairs.

Game Type: Individual, Pair, Group

Download Tongue Twisters (95406 downloads)

One of the most fun vocabulary workshop activities where students guess the mystery word based on two or three pictures. The pictures are the clue to the puzzle so the students must be able to identify them first, then combine the words to get the answer. For example, the pictures of an “ice” and a letter “T” will create the word “iced tea” if combined.

Game Type: Individual, Team

Download Visual Puzzles (39587 downloads)

There are many types of word puzzles for all ages including adults! I like the fact that I can have a number of different unique word puzzles created to printout on the same topic. So when we are studying a topic in English, say “Family and Friends”, I can print out six different sets then split the class into six groups and give them each a unique puzzle to solve.

You can let the students (in their groups) create word puzzles themselves for their classmates to solve. Assign each group their “mission” and explain the kind of puzzle they should make online. They have to send you the digital copy at the end of the lesson so you could produce enough copies for the rest of the class. During vocabulary workshop, the group that created the puzzles take the center stage and discuss the answers.

Download Vocabulary Puzzle Activity (9310 downloads)