As many teachers know, getting students to understand, remember and correctly use vocabulary words that are part of the curriculum can be difficult. Many students find vocabulary lists to be either tedious, difficult, uninteresting or overwhelming. By incorporating games into the vocabulary lessons, teachers can enliven the English lessons and give students another way to interact with unfamiliar words. Most of the games can be made with easy-to-find or inexpensive items and rely on rules used in pre-established games.
Tent Vocabulary Cards
Tent Vocabulary Cards is a game where students create tent-like cards folded in the center and group words with a similar meaning or theme, such as pairs of adjectives, time words or prepositions. The word pairs are written on each side of the tent card, and the game begins with students trying to remember the accompanying word and explaining the relationship between them.
Dictation Game
Students can get more familiar with vocabulary words by dictating them. The teacher can make a game of this by reading vocabulary words aloud in a continual, regular pace and awarding the win to the student who copies them down the fastest (but the words must be accurately spelled and copied).
Wheeling Words
Teachers can play Pat Sajak as the host of Wheeling Words, a vocabulary game modeled after the television game show "Wheel of Fortune." Puzzle boxes are drawn on the board to represent each letter of a given vocabulary word, and a general clue is given. Students roll dice and take turns guessing a letter of the word, one letter per turn. If the letter is in the word, the team is awarded the dice number in points. Teams can buy a vowel for five points and can guess the word as one turn.
The Vocabulary Memory Game
The Vocabulary Memory Game pairs students in twos, and they are given a set of cards faced down. The cards each have a vocabulary word or definition that is part of a matching set. Students take a turn, turning over two cards each turn in attempts to match the correct word with the correct definition. Once a pair is correctly grouped, it is removed from the game, and the player who got the correct match gets a consecutive turn.
Seven-up Vocabulary
Seven-up Vocabulary is a twist on the classic classroom game Seven-Up, Heads-Up. Seven students are "it" and are given index cards with a vocabulary word written on them. Everyone puts their heads down on their desks and holds out their hands. Each "it" student places a vocabulary card in a student's outstretched hand. When the teacher says, "Heads-up, seven-up," the students with the cards in their hands stand and guess who picked them. If the selected student guesses the correct person and is able to define the vocabulary word on her card, she gets to be "it" in the next round.
Tags: vocabulary word, vocabulary words, cards each, letter word, Memory Game, Seven-up Vocabulary, Tent Vocabulary