Engaging Vocabulary Activities

We are going to start off today’s blog with your reflection question. How are you including vocabulary activities in your current lessons? Take a moment to reflect on this question. Think about this question and answer to yourself honestly where you stand. 

Vocabulary building is such an important part of supporting our Language Learners. An obstacle that many of us face is finding engaging ways to include this in our daily lesson planning. We want to take time for building vocabulary, but the activities seem repetitive and dull to our students. 

As I was teaching a writing activity, I noticed the students were stuck on the vocabulary “good” and “bad”. At that moment, I knew that I needed to start doing more vocabulary building with the students. I wanted them to be prepared for upcoming assessments, expand their writing, and so much more. The students having a limited vocabulary could hinder the growth that so many of them wanted. 

I made a conscious decision to be more intentional about vocabulary activities. I knew that I wanted them to be engaging and at the same time prompting their language growth. The first engaging activity is to do a vocabulary word of the week. You can break down the word and have a special focus each day. For example, on Monday I introduce the word to the student and have a quick discussion. Tuesday the students create their own sentences. At the end of the week we have a fun Kahoot quiz to test the students’ knowledge about the word. In my Teacher Pay Teacher store I have an Academic Word of the Week you can implement with your students immediately! 

I recently came across such a fun and engaging vocabulary activity from Reading & Writing Haven. She has her students personify the vocabulary words using social media. For example, the students have a vocabulary word and they create a social media post based on that vocabulary word. This gave me so much inspiration on how to use this in my classroom. The assignment was also a fantastic opportunity because students love platforms like Instagram and Snapchat. 

I also included more vocabulary games into my lessons. One popular game that I used is Taboo! I love playing Taboo at parties and this proved to be a hit with my students as well. The students enjoyed playing Taboo with the vocabulary words with their classmates. As an additional support for my students, I allowed them to use pictures and created sentence frames for them to use during the game. 

Think about how you incorporate vocabulary into your daily lessons. It can be as simple as doing a word of the week and dedicating 7-10 minutes a day. 

Connect the vocabulary words to what they are already interested in. For example, social media is really popular among students. Reading & Writing Haven provided an example with details of how this can be done. Check out her visual example that I will link for you. 

Use games to teach and reinforce vocabulary for your Language Learners. My favorite one is Taboo. Some other games you can use are Scrabble and Pictionary.

Your next steps are simple. Take a moment to brainstorm how you are creating engaging vocabulary activities in your classroom. Then, implement some of the tips I shared with you today. I promise you are going to see your engagement through the roof!

What are your favorite vocabulary activities to use with your students?

You can download the transcript here.