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Research says that to learn
a new word a person needs to encounter it at least six times, and up to as many as 20. Students need to encounter a new word in multiple contexts. They also need to attend to how the word sounds, how it is written, its usage, and what it means to own the word. This means we teachers need to present and recycle new vocabulary in a variety of meaningful and distinctive ways.
Here are some of the activities I do to present and recycle vocabulary:
Vocabulary Corner
Students need to dedicate a place to record new words. This can be a small spiral notebook or a page in their binder. They should review their lists regularly.
Teachers also need a place to record the class’s new vocabulary. I dedicate one area of the board to new words. At the end of each class, the class and I go over the words, pronouncing them, and then selecting 5 to 7 salient words for our vocabulary lists. We all record these words in our notes.
Dictation
At the beginning or end of class, I take five minutes to dictate short sentences with the new vocabulary.
Flash Cards
I encourage students to write up flash cards them and keep handy a zip-lock. They write a new word on one side of a small card and its translation or definition on the other side. they can clip the bag to their binder or
Question Cards
As a warm up, I often distribute questions on cards to pairs of students. These questions incorporate or review recently learned vocabulary. In pairs, students take turns asking and answering the questions; for example: How many nieces do you have? (niece is new word) or How many parts of car can you name?
Class Vocabulary Cards
I also write all the new vocabulary from the class on cards. I write each word or phrase in large print on a 3 x 5 card. Every few months I start a new collection of cards. We use these cards in the following activities.
Sorting
I hand ten random cards to each pair of students and tell them to sort the words in any of the following categories:
- parts of speech (verbs, nouns, adjectives)
- one, two, three, or four syllable words
- alphabetical order
Classifying
I call out a category and have students look through their words to find ones that fit. For example, I tell the class:
- Find all the verbs.
- Find all the words that describe a person.
- Find all the words you use at work.
- Find all the words that are about food.
Personalizing
I hand one or two cards to each student. Students write a true sentence using the word on their card. When the student is finished writing, I check the sentence. If the usage is correct, I hand the student a new card.
I play verbal charades. I create sentences with words or phrases that could replace recently learned words. I underline the words/phrases and ask students to work in pairs and try to guess which word/phrase fits best. I also ask them to make any necessary grammar changes to make the sentence correct. For example:
Life can be very confusing during the teenage years. (the teenage years is underlined.) They are to replace it with “adolescence.” My students enjoy this activity and it encourages them to negotiate with each other to argue, concur, or convince.
One review activity I use that my students really enjoy is playing “taboo”. It is loosely based on the commercial game of the same name. I make cards with each of the vocabulary words I want to review. I then divide the class into two or three teams. When it is the team’s turn, one person from the team comes to the front and sits with their back to the class. I then take the first card and show it to the whole class. The members of the team try to get their teammate sitting in the front to say the word on the card. The team members can use associations, definitions, synonyms, or sentences with a blank for the word. They cannot say any form of the word itself, but they can give the part of speech to get their teammate to say the correct form of the word. Each team gets 2 minutes to try to get as many of the words as possible. If they try a word and their teammate isn’t getting it, they can say “pass” and we go to the next word. When they get it correct, we also go to the next word. At the end of two minutes we go to the next team. After 15-20 minutes, the team with the most correct words, wins.
Thank you for sharing your ideas!
This is how we work on vocabulary http://themachinegoeson.blogspot.com/2010/12/vocabulary-challenge.html