Our students have to grapple with new words every day. Some of these words they will quite likely never encounter again. We call these words "throw away" words. Some words, however, will need to be practiced and recycled for many lessons to come. How can we help our students manage all these new words? What techniques and strategies can we give them to make learning vocabulary more meaningful and, quite frankly, easier?
This month we present a "Favourite words" activity. It's easy: at the end of a lesson, week, unit, month - whatever the teacher decides - students will vote on their favourite word. The criteria can be decided on as a class: most useful, best sounding, most fun to pronounce, etc. Students could even be divided into teams to create cheers for their word and try to convince their classmates to vote for theirs and not another word.
After the favourite word for that lesson/week/unit/month has been voted on, students can do a number of things with the winning word:
- Put the word on a piece of paper and decorate it. Include a picture (drawn or cut from a magazine) that illustrates the word, or simply decorate the letters themselves. One thing students can do to help them visualise the word is to use the letters of the word as part of their drawing (e.g., the h in house might become the chimney, the o a bush outside of the house, the u a window, etc.). Post the words on the wall.
- Give a small prize (piece of candy, extra point, "free homework" pass) to the student who can use this word (in a natural way) the most during the next few lessons (in an answer, in a conversation, in a role play).
- Every time students encounter this word in a reading text, they highlight it. They could also keep track of the number of times they encounter it in a week, and after a few lessons see which words they've encountered more, and then discuss why.
- Play a game and see how many words students can make out of the letters in the winning word (works well for longer words). For instance, from nevertheless we can rearrange the letters and also get these, else, veer, etc.
- After a number of elections, students can do crossword puzzles or word games using the winning words.
- Students can write why they like this word, using the word itself as many times as possible. (See the example below.)
As students choose the words themselves, they see the word in more than one context and the word becomes relevant to them on a more personal level than simply memorizing vocabulary lists.
Give it a try! And let us know what words "win" when you do!