36: Vocabulary Activities For Preview and Review
Easy vocabulary conversation prompts, activities, and games to preview and review vocabulary.
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Vocabulary Activities Task Cards
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36: Vocabulary Activities for Preview and Review
D: Hello and welcome to the TOD POD, a podcast to support Itinerant Teachers of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, SLPs, and other Deaf Education Professionals. I'm Deanna Barlow from Listening Fun and today we're talking through some activities for vocabulary goals.
I've talked about before how vocabulary is really learned best in context through conversation. But sometimes we're tasked with previewing and reviewing vocabulary from the classroom and sometimes that can feel a little stale, a little boring. So I have a resource in my store, it's actually one of the first things I posted, of task cards of different vocabulary discussion starters, activities, games. And I'm going to talk through some of the ideas here. So that way you have some ideas for previewing and reviewing academic vocabulary.
If you have access to a textbook or like a chapter book from class, any material like that, I will often make the first part of the activity going through and identifying all the vocabulary words that need review. Once I have a list then we could do some of these activities. Or if it's like ELA vocabulary, you might already have a list pre-made that you need to go over.
So the first option is just verbally talking about the word. I can ask the student some conversation starters like, think of a category this word fits it too and explain your thinking to me. So if the vocabulary word was like “adage”, which is a proverb or a short statement expressing a general truth, I could put that word in the category of advice. Like an adage could be a type of advice and that might be a little more meaningful than that definition I just read. Or I could put it in the category of sayings, because adages are often little sayings. Like better safe than sorry. Maybe this could lead me and the student to Googling more examples of adages and discussing the word. So you see that that's like a little more meaningful makes more connections than just discussing the definition as is.
Another prompt could be, think of 3 words that are similar to this word, what do they have in common? So there's a lot of ways a student can answer this. Maybe if the word is something like “diction”, which is the choice and use of words and phrases in speech or writing. They could tell me that “wording” has a similar meaning to diction, or “dictionary” is similar because they share a root word and it has, they both have to do with words. There's a lot of different discussion depending on what the word is. The idea should to get the wheels turning and help them make connections to that word. So it's easier for them to remember what it means. So if they see diction, they might remember a dictionary you remember something to do with words.
Another one is think of an example of this word. So like for our example “adage” that would be a great one for that thinking of examples of adages. You can ask what's a part of speech, can you turn this word into a different part of speech? Sometimes the answer is no but a lot of times you can. And once again this gives you an opportunity to delve deeper into the meaning of the word. Let's say the vocabulary word is “emphasis”, which means special importance, value, or prominence given to something. It's a noun but it could be turned into a verb, emphasize. Like to emphasize something important when you're speaking and maybe the verb emphasize is easier for them to remember than the noun emphasis.
Another conversation prompt could be, think of two words that rhyme or sound similar. So that opens up a great conversation about affixes which can be super helpful for learning vocabulary. And then there's a bunch of theoretical ones like if this word was a person, would you want to be their friend. Why or why not? If this word was a color what color would it be and why? If this word could live anywhere where would it live? If this word was a food would you eat it? If this word was an app what app would it be? If you can imagine this could lead to some very interesting discussions depending on the vocabulary word. Words like nefarious or obstacle are going to have different connotations, compared to words like superior or vibrant.
For me, I wouldn't want to be friends with nefarious, I associate it with the color green. I think it would live in like a cave or like a haunted house or somewhere scary. I definitely would not eat it because it'd probably be poison and as an app, I don't know probably Twitter [LAUGH] and we could discuss why I think those things, like one at a time obviously. And by the end I would have a pretty comprehensive understanding of the word nefarious.
Versus a word like vibrant. Like I would love to be their friend. I'd probably associate it with like bright pink or something. Probably live on a beach or somewhere sunny. I would eat it because it's probably be like a fresh fruit or a vegetable. It's like a vibrant color. And I would associate it with bright pictures maybe on Instagram or something like that. So you can kind of tailor it to the student you're talking to but it just gives you kind of a funny way to think about it. There's other theoretical conversation topics too when you could be as creative as you want. And kind of tailor it to their interests. So obviously if a student is very literal look I don't want them to think that vibrant is something you eat. It's like vibrant can be used to describe something that is a bright color but it's just a way to talk around the word to give some nuance. So that would probably be more of a higher level thinking conversation prompt but for the students that are capable of doing it, it really helps them remember what a word means.
Another conversation prompt I like is how would you describe this word to a kindergartner, assuming they're older than that. Being able to explain a word definition in a very simple way requires a deeper understanding than just memorizing the definition. They say if you know something really well you can teach it and teaching it helps you understand it really well.
Alright, let's move on from conversation topics to some activities. A lot of these can be done with a whiteboard. I also like the whiteboard app or the notes app on an iPad. Or if you have those like black drawing tablets, they're very inexpensive from Amazon those were great too.
So one activity could be describe this word acrostic poem style. So you know like when you write the word vertically and then you make an acrostic poem out of it. So if the vocabulary word is “peer”, then the p could be person in my class. E, everyone in my class is my peer. E, even the kids in the other classes are my peers. R, right around the same age as me. So it just forces the students that think beyond the basic definition and understand some of the nuances of the word, and you could do that with any word, the long ones give you a lot of opportunity to think about it.
Another one is write the word in the in a way that shows its meaning. So for “peer”, maybe you try to write the word in the shape of a person with the P being the body, the R being the legs and the E being the arms or one E being the arms and one being the head. It could be silly, like it's just a way to talk about the word. If there's a word that's definition means like large you could write it really big something like that it depends on the word.
Another activity could be let's find this word on the internet. What kind of website might use this word? And you try to find it on a website and read the sentence it's used in. It really requires you to think about what the word means and how it's used. Another one could be look at all of your vocabulary words. And can we try to sort them into some kind of groups. So students might do this by meaning or by root word or by associations they have with those words. Really sometimes they'll surprise you and have different associations than you do and that's totally fine. All that matters is they're making connections in their brain. So when they have to recall that word it's connected to something else in their brain.
Another activity is look around the room and find one thing that represents your word. And can you explain the connection. Or maybe randomly pick 3 words off the list and tell a story using all 3 words that have a problem and a solution. Or you can play a word association game where player one says the vocabulary word, player two says the first word they think of when they hear that word, just one word. Then player one says the first word they think of in response. And you go back and forth until you see if you can get back to the original word. So if the word is “photosynthesis”, player 2 may say plants, player one might say stem, player 2 might say leaves, player one says sunlight, player 2 says photosynthesis and we're back.
Speaking of games you can always go back to some of the basics. Instead of Hangman now I prefer to do like a flower power game where I draw a circle in every letter you guess wrong I add a petal to the flower then the leaves and the stem. And you could do a Pictionary style game where one person tries to draw a scene that depicts the word just like a sketch. You could do a charades type game where one person tries to act out the definition of a word for the other person to guess. Trust me that one gets silly and they will remember it.
I’ve also done like a heads up style game where each person holds up a word to their forehead. And you have to describe each other's word to each other try to guess it. You can also play like an unscramble game like unscramble the words, where each player takes half the vocabulary list, scrambles the letters in each word, and then the players trade lists, and every time you figure out a word, you have to either say the meaning or use it in a sentence. And the first player to unscramble and use all their words wins. That's a good one for students who need to learn more about like root words and affizes tan just need more time playing around with spelling. There is a bunch of other little ideas in these task cards, but I feel like that's a good list to get you started or jog your memory for some vocabulary activities.
As always the most important thing to remember is that vocabulary is learned in context through conversation. So the point of all of these prompts, activities and games, is to give you and the student an opportunity to think critically about the words, make connections, and develop a deeper understanding of the words that you are previewing or reviewing. So that's it for today. As always the transcript and links for those task cards will be in the show notes and at listentotodpod.com. If you're looking for more support with vocabulary you can also check out my Listen and Color resources if you aren't working from a specific list and just generally need more practice with multiple meaning words, context clues, synonyms, antonyms, that sort of thing. Thanks for listening and I'll talk to you next week. Bye!