Below is an example of how this would work. It was designed for a kindergarten class who already had some exposure to letters and sounds (i.e. a kindergarten class in the spring term, not the fall term). We did it as an all class activity. I put the worksheet up on the projector, and elicited from the class what the names of the pictures were. Then we sounded out the first letter of the word together. Then the students told me what letter made that sound, and I wrote it down on my copy on the projector, and they also copied down the same letter on their paper.
This is an example for desert plants and animals: docs, pub
This is an activity that I've used many times before on this blog, but I was just realizing that I never formally listed it under my list of activities for vocabulary. Well, better late than never.
This is an activity that works best with vocabulary that can be visually represented, so it tends to work best with lower level students. But at the same time, the students need to be able to read and write at least a little bit for this activity to work (so in most countries, it's not appropriate for students below 6 years old or so.)
Here is an example of a time when I used this activity (docs, pub)--from English World 2: Unit 1 p.24-25 Reading. You can see that at the top of the sheet I have a word bank, and the students match the words from the word bank to the pictures.
At my new school, my mentor has been introducing me to a technique known as the Picture Word Inductive Model. This is a new technique for me, and I don't believe this method was widely used abroad (i.e. in the CELTA and Delta methodologies in which I was trained up in.) But, as always, it could just have been a personal blind spot. Let me know if you've used this method before.
Although it's new to me, it's not new, and there are lots of webpages out there describing (see here, here, here and others). But I will also try to describe it below as my mentor explained it to me.
You start out by projecting a picture onto the whiteboard. Then, eliciting vocabulary from the students, you help the class to label as many things in the picture as they can. The teacher supplies the vocabulary as necessary, but ideally most of it should come from the class.
Then, once all the concrete objects in the picture have been labelled (i.e. all the nouns), then the teacher encourages students to think about appropriate adjectives for these nouns. What color are they? Are they big or small? Et cetera.
Then, the teacher encourages students to think of verbs associated with these nouns. What are the things doing?
Finally, the teacher guides the students to making full sentences with these words. The teacher writes it up on the board, and then the students copy it into the notebooks.
As my mentor demonstrated it, this then lead into independent student work. After the teacher had demonstrated how to write sentences on the board, the students discussed with partners, and continued to write their own sentences.
Then, at the end of the class, some of the students read back to the class some of the sentences they have written. As my mentor pointed out, this technique incorporates all the skills or reading, writing and speaking. (And perhaps listening as well, if the students have to listen to the their classmates' sentences.)
This activity can be used in some classes as just a general language fluency building activity. But, it can also be used to introduce and practice a certain vocabulary set, if you have a picture that goes with that vocabulary set.
If you follow this blog regularly, you have probably noticed that recently I've been including a lot of coloring sheets with my lessons. (See, for example, my lessons for Oxford Picture Dictionary Content Areas for Kids.) So I thought I should make a post outlining my thinking about using coloring sheets in class.
In one of the schools I taught at in Vietnam, it was normal for teachers teaching young children to spend about 20 minutes out of a 2 hour lesson on coloring activities. However, even though this practice was widespread, it was also controversial. Many of the managers disapproved of it, and it was tolerated more than it was encouraged.
The reason that this practice was disapproved of was because it didn't actually practice language, and was thought to not be helpful in language acquisition.
The reason that it was so widespread was (I assume) because it was a good activity to calm the children down. It was also thought that 2 hours was too long to do language drills with very young children, and that the act of coloring added in a nice change of pace. The practice of coloring, especially learning to color within the lines, was thought to add with the children's cognitive development and motor skills, even if it did not relate to language learning directly.
But back in those days (2015-2020), it was before AI, so the coloring sheets were just random coloring sheets that could be found in the teacher's resource room or off of the Internet. Now, with AI, it is possible to create coloring sheets that are tailored exactly to vocabulary words that the students are learning.
I've been using Google Gemini myself for this, and have generally had good luck with it--once I learned to modify the prompt appropriately. I've discovered that sometimes if you just ask Google Gemini to make a coloring sheet, it will produce something with very intricate and small designs that aren't suitable for kindergarteners coloring with big crayons. So I've learned to add in the following instructions in my prompt:
Because Kindergartners are still learning how to color, the coloring sheet should not have any small objects, but big pictures of everything
I've also learned that Google Gemini will occasionally try to include words or captions in the coloring sheet. I'm not opposed to text per se, but the problem is that AI seems to have a problem with accurate spelling when it's generating images. (AI is able to produce accurate spelling when it's generating texts, but not generating images. I assume this is a glitch that will eventually be worked out in future generations of AI, but for now this is the way it works. So I will often add in this additional instruction:
Do not include any words or names on the coloring sheet.
The standard prompt that I use for Google Gemini then is this:
Make a coloring sheet for kindergartners for ________. It should include these images: _______________. Do not include any words or names on the coloring sheet. Because Kindergartners are still learning how to color, the coloring sheet should not have any small objects, but big pictures of everything.
For an example of a recent time when I used this prompt, see this chat here.
I generally have good luck with this prompt, although it's obviously not 100% effective. (Using AI is always somewhat touch and go).
As to why and how I use coloring sheets in my lesson, here are my uses so far:
* In cases where I'm unsure about the timing of the lesson, I will sometimes print out coloring sheets just as an optional final activity, just to give myself that additional safety cushion. (As all teachers know, there's nothing worse than running out of activities with 10 minutes in the lesson left to go.)
* When working with young children in small groups, I will discuss the coloring sheet with them as they color. (e.g. "What color do you want to color the tomato?" or "I see that you're coloring the dog green.")
* There are some young children who are less disruptive during the lesson if they have something to do with their hands. I find that coloring helps to keep them occupied while I practice the vocabulary with them. (Although the obvious disadvantage of this is that it means I only have half of their attention when I'm presenting the vocabulary to them.)
* One of my mentors recently suggested to me that the coloring activity could easily be made more language focused if I made it into an activity in which the young learners listened to my instructions, and colored accordingly. (E.g. "Look at this. What is this?" (It's an apple.) "Let's color the apple red. Can you find your red crayon?" etc.)
This activity was recently introduced to me by one of the trainers at my school.
As it was explained to me, it works like this:
Each student is given a flashcard (or printed paper) with a picture of a vocabulary word on it. Each student has a different picture.
They walk around the room and find another student to pair up with. Then, each student asks the other one "What is this?" The other student must identify the picture.
Then, after both students have quizzed the other one, they trade pictures, so that each student now has a new picture.
They must then go and find another student to quiz with their new picture.
This activity can also be used for grammar points if a student is given a prompt that requires using a grammatical feature in the answer.
I've done a brief search online just now, and have found a few websites that do a better job of explaining this activity than I have done. So see also here, here, here, etc.
I grew up calling this game "memory", but I've met people who refer to it as concentration, and I believe it is known as Pelmanism in Britain. The standard rules for the game are on Wikipedia here.
This works best in cases where there are two complementary sentences (e.g active/passive, reported speech/direct speech, past simple/present simple). It can also possibly work with sentences that can be divided into two halves (e.g. if clause and result clause). Sentence or sentence halves are put onto cards. The cards are put face down and, just like the classic game of memory, students have to turn over the cards to try to find a match.
For a purely receptive game, the students just turn over the cards. This game can also be turned into a scaffolded production game if students must predict what the matching card will be before turning it over. (e.g. for active/passive game, if they turn over a card in the active voice, they must say the passive equivalent correctly in order to get a chance to find the card).
As mentioned above, despite my including this game in my list of Activities That Can Be Used for Any Grammar Point, it works best only with select grammar points. It can, however, be easily adapted for any vocabulary set. Simply put the term on one card, and the definition on another card. (Or for lower levels, use a picture instead of a definition.)
* Like a lot of classroom games, this can be hit or miss depending on the group of students. I've had classes where the students got super into this game, and super competitive with each other, and we had a lot of fun with it. And I've had classes where the students are not focused on the game at all. Because this game only words if the students are concentrating on the game, and remembering where the cards are, it can turn into a disaster if the students are not concentrating on the game.
In my experience, this is particularly a problem when teaching online.
I remember particularly during the Covid shutdown period trying to play online memory games, and it was very obvious none of the students were paying attention when it wasn't their turn, and the game just dragged on and on.
But whether teaching online or offline, the lesson is that if the students aren't paying attention, don't be afraid to end the game early, and move on to the next activity.
* When playing this game in the classroom, I usually just print out the cards on normal paper, and then cut them up. Sometimes, depending on the thickness of the paper or the brightness of the room, the students can cheat by seeing through the paper. This could probably be fixed by using thicker paper, but I've actually never been too bothered by it. The point of the game is to practice the language, not the memory skills. Even if they can see through the paper, they still have to make the correct matches.
For that matter, all memory games can also be converted to simple matching activities, depending on the challenge level desired.
* I've discovered that local rules for this game vary from country to country, and often from household to household. For example, when I lived in Japan they usually played it that when you were down to the last few pairs, you would mix up the cards again. (I thought this was unfair, since it I thought the whole point of the game was to reward players who could memorize the card positions. But that's how they played it there.)
Another alternate rule is that some people play that if you are able to make a match, you get to go again. This is how I grew up playing the game, so I'm partial to this rule. But in the classroom, you do need to be a bit careful as it can allow a smart player to dominate the game. And you want to make sure that all the players get equal practice with the language. So sometimes it is good to just give each player only one chance, regardless of whether or not they can get a match
"I need a new way to do semi-controlled practice for vocabulary," I said to my colleague.
He suggested I might try to make things fresh by using a website like quizziz.
I've mentioned https://quizizz.com/ before on this blog (here and here), but in addition to what I've previously talked about, another feature is that it has questions with open-ended answers.
So, you can write in a prompt like: Make a sentence using the word "educate".
Now, there's no way for the quizziz website to determine which answers are right or wrong, and consequently the website can't award points like it normally does. (So some of the fun game element is unfortunately removed), but students do sometimes enjoy just getting a chance to use their phones and tablets during the lesson, and it is something different. I don't do this every lesson, but when I think students are getting sick of writing sentences up on the whiteboard, I'll make a quizziz activity for the semi-controlled practice instead.
At the end of the quizziz activity, I can see all the sentences the students have written, and we can go over them together and discuss them as a class.
Quizziz also offers the option to put pictures in the prompts, which can make the exercise a bit more controlled. So, instead of saying "write a sentence using the word 'educate'", you can say: Make a sentence describing this picture. Use the word "educate".
See here for an example of such an activity I made using quizziz. (This was for a vocabulary lesson from page 83 of Impact 4).
There are many different ways to get students to notice the target language. This flowchart lists several of them: "Guided discovery, underline Target Language, elicit, sorting, categorizing, matching, information exchange, gallery..."
In my own lessons, I tend to favor the following methods:
* Gap-fills: Students are given a version of the model text in which the target language has been removed and replaced by blanks. They then have to reconstruct the text by writing the target language in the blanks. (For an example of this type of worksheet, see HERE.) This is then checked either by listening to the model text again, or by placing the completed model text outside the room, and students check with a running dictation.
I should also note that "Noticing the Target Language" doesn't always have to be a long activity. It could be done just by having the teacher just display some sentences on the board or on the projector. (e.g. "Now, look at these sentences from the reading.")
Or, it could be done by simply giving the students a version of the model text in which the target language is in bold, or underlined.
...perhaps I've been guilty of using these types of games too much.
You see, the problem with these games is that they're not really practicing using the vocabulary in meaningful contexts. They're essentially just repeating the clarification of meaning stage over and over again.
Now, don't get me wrong, these activities have their place. If you don't overuse them, they can be a fun game to liven up the lesson. They can also be useful for reviewing vocabulary from previous lessons.
But, in a vocabulary lesson, you need to move beyond simply recognizing the vocabulary, and start getting the students to use that vocabulary.
And again, if you look at my archives, this is something I've not been great at doing in the past. (Historically I've often just gotten stuck on the "match the word to the definition" games and not moved beyond it.) But it's something I'm going to try to do better on in the future. And this blog post will describe some ideas for practicing activities that are about actually using the vocabulary.
In terms of the practice part of the lesson, the staging framework for grammar and vocabulary lessons is:
I included several ideas for activities in that previous document, but that document was only for grammar. So, how can vocabulary be practiced at the controlled, semi-controlled, and freer level?
Well, the range of activities available will depend on the type of vocabulary--whether the target vocabulary for the lesson is all from a single lexical set, or if the vocabulary for the lesson is from different lexical sets.
If all the vocabulary comes from the same context, then you've got a lot more activities that lend themselves to practicing that vocabulary. For controlled practice activities, you can get students to do ranking activities with these vocabulary (e.g. most important to least important). Or categorization activities (e.g. positive vs. negative traits). For freer practice activities, any speaking or writing activity related to the context will provide opportunities for practicing the vocabulary. Etc.
However, in my experience, most of the vocabulary lessons that I have to teach deal with vocabulary items that are unrelated to each other--i.e. vocabulary items that are not all from the same lexical set. (*1) (*2)
That could be just my context, but I feel like that's the general trend these days.
So, this post will deal with practice activities that can be used for a vocabulary lesson in which the words are not from the same lexical set.
For those types of lessons, practice activities that work well are:
Controlled Practice
Gap-fill sentences. There are a series of sentences. Each sentence has a gap in it representing a missing word. The students have to fill in the missing word using one of the target vocabulary words from the day's lesson.
This can be done simply on a worksheet. But it can also be gamified easily enough. (e.g. Show the students a sentence with a missing word--the first team to get the correct word wins.) Examples of ways to gamify gap-fill sentences are board race, Kahoot, garbage man, Grass Skirts, PowerPoint Games, Bamboozle, etc.
(*1) There's been some discussion in recent years about whether it's best to present vocabulary in lexical sets or not.
Historically, the preference was to present vocabulary items as part of a lexical set. (Older textbooks reflect this.) But then research came out that said that students actually remembered the vocabulary better when the vocabulary in the lesson was not all from the same lexical set. This is counterintuitive, but I guess the logic was that if you presented students with 20 vocabulary words that were all from the same context, the students would start to confuse the words with each other. See, for example, this article HERE.
So, for a few years, the common wisdom was that the vocabulary in a lesson should not all be from the same lexical set.
But then the pendulum swung back the other way again, and people began to say that actually the research findings--that students learn better when the vocabulary is from different lexical sets--were over-reported, and maybe not accurate. So maybe we're now back again to the idea of teaching vocabulary as lexical sets?
...I don't know, and I've not kept up with the whole controversy in detail. This is just my impression of the whole thing, based on what I've been able to glean from podcasts and blogposts, et cetera. Let me know if I'm getting anything wrong here...
But all that being said, for the average ESL teacher, I think it's a moot point. That's because the average ESL teacher doesn't have any control over what the target vocabulary will be. Your average ESL teacher is just given a textbook and told to follow the textbook, and so the target vocabulary is whatever the textbook publishers choose. The only thing in the teacher's control is how to practice this vocabulary, and so that's the purpose of this blogpost.
(*2) In many of my old posts, when I use the term "vocabulary set", I'm usually talking about the target vocabulary for a specific lesson. So, for example, in my post "Activities that can be used for any Vocabulary Set" what I mean is activities that can be used for any vocabulary lesson--whether or not the target vocabulary comes from the same lexical set or not.
I mentioned in that previous post that a popular way to clarify vocabulary was to match the words to the definitions. This activity typically works by having a set of vocabulary words at the top of the sheet, and the definitions further down the worksheet.
I used to do this a lot. But then I realized that by putting the vocabulary words at the top of the sheet, I was removing the need to look at the model text. And if you're doing a "language from a text" lesson, then you don't want to be taking the students out of the text. You want them to be seeing the vocabulary in the text. That is, after all, the whole point of a language from a text lesson.
Let me use the Impact textbooks as an example. I've been teaching out of the Impact series for the past several years (Impact 2, Impact 3, Impact 4). The Impact textbooks always begin the new unit with about 20 new vocabulary words which are embedded in a text. There is, however, no clarification activity, so the teacher has to design that themselves.
In the past, I used to design a worksheet where all the vocabulary was put at the top of the sheet, and the definitions below (for an example of this, see page 5 of this worksheet from Unit 1 of Impact 3).
Or, to make things more fun and kinesthetic, I would put the definitions on one set of cards, and the vocabulary words on another. As I described in this post here. But as fun and kinesthetic as this was, I eventually realized this also took the students out of the text. And I wanted them to use the text when they were trying to figure out the meaning of the word.
So eventually I started designing worksheets that didn't include the vocabulary at the top. This meant that the students had to search for the vocabulary in the text.
And, if I do a noticing activity, that involves matching vocabulary to blanks in the text, then I make sure to take that worksheet back from the students before I give them the list of definitions. Again, the reason is I don't want them looking at the bank of vocabulary words at the top of the sheet. I want them to go back to the sentences in the text, and use the context of those sentences.
One way to make this slightly more engaging is to use quizziz. So instead of putting the definitions on a boring white paper, I put the definitions into a quizziz quiz. Because quizziz lets the students work through the questions individually and at their own pace, it's essentially the same thing as if they were working off of a worksheet, it's just a bit more gamified.
As I learned from an experienced CELTA trainer(*), there are several different ways of clarifying the meaning of vocabulary:
You can use gestures, pictures, realia, board drawings, examples, mime, context, translation, clines, opposites or synonyms, or definitions. All of these are valid ways of conveying the meaning of vocabulary, but you need to select the best method for the appropriate vocabulary.
For example:
Pictures work very well for concrete nouns that represent physical objects in the real world (e.g. lion, firetruck, etc) and some action verbs (e.g. jump, kick). Pictures work less well for abstract nouns (e.g. justice)
Board Drawing is great for any words that can be quickly sketched, especially if you haven't prepared a picture beforehand (e.g. ladder, snail)
Realia is great for any vocabulary words that can be located in the classroom (e.g. pencil, elbow) or can be easily brought into the classroom (e.g fruits or vegetables)
Translation works very well for technical words which have a very specific meaning in both languages (e.g hemoglobin**). Translation works less well for words that have vague or nuanced meanings, or words that have multiple meanings.
Examples work well for any words that are hyponyms (e.g. if you want to define cutlery, you can give examples like spoon, fork, knife, etc.)
Mime is great for when the vocabulary is representing a physical action (e.g. limp, lean)
Gesture can be used with phrases like a tiny bit, or over and under.
Clines are good for anytime you have a vocabulary set of words that differ from each other in degree (see examples here)
Opposites are often useful, but of course this relies on the student knowing the opposite. (e.g. you can define miserly as the opposite of generous, but only if your students first know generous).
Synonyms as well rely on the students already knowing the synonym. (e.g. baggy as the opposite of loose). Although you should always be cautious about using synonyms, because it's very rare that two words would exist in the same language that are exactly the same. There's usually some sort of difference in nuance or register or something.
But of all the available methods for clarifying vocabulary, the one most favored by textbook publishers, by far, is match the words to the definitions.
The activity works like this: the students are presented with a set of vocabulary words at the top of the page. They have to match these words to the definitions further down the page (***).
Of course, the obvious question is: if students don't yet know the meaning of the word, how can they match it to the definition?
The answer seems to be that they make their best guess, and then in the all class feedback, the teacher tells them whether or not they got it right. (i.e. the old test-teach-test).
Besides, in any given vocabulary set, students probably know a few of the words already. And if you do it as group work, students can pool their knowledge, and teach each other the words.
Nowadays many textbooks encourage students to check a dictionary to help them complete the activity for any words that they don't know. (The textbook publishers know that the students are always carrying smart phones with them, and so can access online dictionaries or Google Translate at anytime.)
Personally, I have also used "match the word to the definition" activity a lot over the years. (If you search my archives, you'll find this activity pops up many times.) It is, after all, the most obvious activity to use when you want to clarify the meaning of the words in the vocabulary set. It's also the easiest to create.
But over the years, I've been noticing that my students don't really absorb the meaning of a lot of the vocabulary that I teach them. And I think this is partly because it's hard to fully absorb a written definition, especially when it's in your second language.
So recently I've been making an effort to get away from "match the words to the definitions" and return to the old CELTA method of presenting the words in context (****), and then, using that same context, using concept checking questions to check the meaning of the words.
...although actually, come to think of it, that previous post was mostly about using concept checking questions for grammar, not vocabulary. For an example of vocabulary, see this video by Jo Gakonga.
I may still have students match the words to the definitions as a follow-up activity, but now I try to make sure that I always check the words in their original context first (*****).
* Actually this whole post is heavily influenced by two CELTA tutors that I once worked with. Many of the examples I use are also taken directly from them.
*** At one time, I would have imagined that "match the words to the definitions" was such an obvious and standard activity that it would be ridiculous to take the time to explain it. But now I'm not so sure. I remember going to a presentation once at CamTESOL in which an Irish guy (who was teaching at a University in Japan) did a presentation on how to teach vocabulary, and he presented matching the words to the definitions as if it was some new activity that he had thought of himself.
At times like these, I remind myself that a lot of the people teaching at universities in Japan, Korea, Taiwan, etc, have Masters degrees in applied linguistics, but no practical teaching qualifications--no CELTA, no Delta. So they know all about the theory of second language acquisition, but they don't know how to run activities in the classroom. (Having done a Master's Degree in applied linguistics myself, I know exactly what you learn on those courses, and what you don't learn.) I can imagine this Irish guy in the classroom at his university, trying to figure out how to best teach vocabulary, and stumbling upon the idea of having the words on one side of the pager, and the definitions on the other side of the paper, and thinking that he had just thought of something new.
In other words, I've learned over the years not to take it for granted that everyone knows about a certain technique or activity. People in this profession have all different backgrounds and training. Maybe there are still people out there who don't know about "match the word to the definition".
***** Of course, this assumes that you have the vocabulary in a context to begin with. If you don't have a context (i.e. if the textbook you are using just gives you a wordlist to teach, and doesn't put the words into any sort of context), then you'll have to first create some sort of model text to embed the vocabulary in. AI can be helpful with this.
***** Although, a small note of caution, if you clarify the meaning by using concept checking questions, and then you subsequently have students match the vocabulary to the definitions, you are technically clarifying the meaning twice. Which, as I wrote before, an experienced CELTA tutor once told me is a mistake.
But personally I don't think it's the end of the world if you clarify the meaning twice. Maybe clarifying it twice helps the meaning to sink in more? I don't know. But just be careful about this if you are ever doing a formally observed lesson.
It's very simple. The students are given a worksheet containing each of the target vocabulary words in an example sentence. Based on the grammar of the sentence, the students then have to decide what part of speech the target vocabulary is (i.e. noun, adjective, adverb, verb, etc).
My students often struggle with this, at least at first, so I talk through the first couple ones with them as examples before I let them do the rest on their own. Then I make sure to allow time for pair-checking, and finally, I am prepared to do extra clarification and explanation during the feedback and checking stage.
It's somewhat of a guided discovery in the sense that the students are supposed to work out the parts of speech of the vocabulary words themselves, but in practice I also find there is also often a lot of teacher-centered clarification in the feedback.
