Teaching vocabulary is an important part in helping our students understand and appreciate the literature they are reading, but the methods of incorporating vocab study into our lessons haven’t always been the most engaging. When I realized I could ditch the paper and pencil worksheets in favor of a more energized approach, my vocabulary lessons became more memorable and worthwhile. Here are five gamification ideas to bring your vocab lessons to life!
Musical Papers
One of my favorite ways to gamify lessons is to add music! Here are some ideas:
- Hand out slips of paper with correlating information related to vocabulary being studied – for example, the word and its definition, or the word and a fill in the blanks sentence where the word would make sense. When the music plays, students must walk around the classroom. When the music stops, they must find their partner. The last two to find each other each round are eliminated.
- Students pass around a “hot potato” while the music plays. When the music stops, the person holding the potato must find a matching pair in a word sort on the table.
Relay Race
Create relay races by dividing the class into two teams and lining them up on opposite ends of the classroom (or hallway if you want more space). Each team member takes a turn coming to the middle to complete a task before they can return to their team. Tasks can include review questions, puzzles, or more hand on challenges like a word sort.
Trashketball
The original version of this game involves students completing worksheets and getting to shoot baskets into the trash can for every correctly completed worksheet, but there are lots of fun variations of this idea that you can use to teach vocabulary. Students can work as individuals or in teams to search through their notes or text for a specific vocabulary word or term related to a definition or clue provided. Each individual or team gets the amount of shots on basket as correct answers they accumulate. The individual or team who is able to sink the most baskets wins the game.
Hot Seat
A fun way to review concepts is to have students volunteer to sit in the “hot seat” which is facing away from the board or projector screen. You can display images and have the class try to get the person in the hot seat to say the word by describing it to them.
Memory Matching
Memory Matching games aren’t just for toddlers! You can use this strategy with just about any topic in middle and high school, and the students will really get into it! Some ideas for memory matching vocabulary games could include matching a word to its definition, matching a word to its part of speech, or matching synonyms.
Looking to read more about gamification in ELA? Check out our blog post on Four Simple Back-To-School Community-Building Activities With a Grammar Twist, and don’t forget to follow the discussion on Facebook and Instagram!
