Recording kids’ vocabulary

Do you allow your kids to keep a kid’s vocabulary journal? During class, make them insert new words in the back of their notebooks. Make sure they can say each word properly and have them underline the main stress. They may also produce a translation or a visual representation of the word. To provide meaning, higher levels may provide an explanation of the term in a sentence.

Introducing and practicing kids’ vocabulary

Learn English Kids vocabulary has over 100-word games that help learners learn and practice new vocabulary through image matching games. Using flashcards to show and learn vocabulary is also a smart idea. You can use this flashcard creator to build your own flashcards or use the sets of flashcards on Learn English Kids vocabulary.

• Use the flashcards to present each kid’s vocabulary component.

Instruct the students to respond to the flashcards nonverbally by executing acts. Can they, for example, walk like tigers or elephants?

• Place the flashcards on the wall, roof, window, seats, or the floor in the room. When the students hear the right flashcard, make them point to it. Learners could dash to the correct section of the room or stand next to the correct card, based on the size of the class.
• Send each of your students a set of flashcards and tell them to show you the correct card when they hear the object, such as “Show me the giraffe!” or “Hands up if you have the jellyfish!” or “Point to the yak!” Assign. team an equal number of flashcards, and the team that sends you the correct item first gets a point!
• Drill the vocabulary on the flashcards for the entire class, squads, or small classes one at a time. When drilled in various ways, such as painfully, enthusiastically, violently, forcefully, softly, or as an orang-out, this can be a lot of fun!

• Make a line on the board with five or six flashcards.

Remove the last card after drilling each object. Drill up to and including the missing object once more. Take another card out of the deck. Continue until all of the flashcards have been removed and the students can recall all of the things that are absent!

• To keep the students on their toes, ask them to recognize the object by ‘flashing’ the flashcards easily, upside down, or back-to-front (just so they can see the outline of the image or phrase through the paper). You may also cover the flashcard with another piece of paper and eventually expose the image or letters of the word.
• Arrange your flashcards by color or number. Place the cards face-up on the board or table until you’ve shown your students both the image and the accompanying color or number. ‘What color/number does the aardvark have?’ After that, turn the cards over and ask, “What is red/blue/green?” or “What is number 1/2/3?”

• Inquire if the things on the flashcards are appealing to your pupils.

Your students will respond by raising their left hand to indicate yes, right hand to indicate no, or other culturally appropriate gestures. They may even yell ‘Hurray!’ or ‘Boo!’ before eventually hearing ‘Yeah, I do!’ and ‘No, I don’t!’

Makeup dialogues with new words. Pairs or small groups pick a new term that they feel would be helpful and that they want to recall. You could do this as a class with lower levels and create a dialogue to illustrate the meaning of the word on the board. Higher-level students can use dictionaries and collaborate in pairs to write and act out their dialogues. If your students enjoy making videos, you could film them acting out their dialogues and then show them to the class to review vocabulary in future lessons.

Recycling kids’ vocabulary

Here are some games that your students can enjoy while honing their language skills and recycling target kids’ vocabulary.

• Give each student a photocopy of the kid’s vocabulary flashcards as well as a blank bingo card. Ask them to pick a certain number of kid’s vocabulary words to put on their bingo card. They could also draw or write the vocabulary instead. Place all of the flashcards in a hat and draw them out one by one. ‘Bingo!’ exclaims the first player who has marked off any of the things on their bingo pad.

• Are you a hangman or a shark?

  Play traditional hangman or a hangman variation in which you draw a shark in the sea with a wide-open mouth and many teeth. Make a ten-step path into the shark’s mouth. As in regular hangman, use lines to indicate the word to be guessed. Draw a stick man going down the steps every time a student says the wrong letter. If the stick man runs out of steps, they lose (and the shark eats them!).

• Nougats and crosses.

  Create a set of nine flashcards and list them from 1 to 9. Create a grid on the board, with each square numbered 1 through 9. Separate the students into two groups: nougats (O) and crosses (X) (X). Each team takes turns selecting a number between one and nine. Show them flashcard 5 if nougats choose square 5 as an example. Draw (O) in the square if they correctly identify the card. Every team should try to pick squares that prohibit the other team from having three in a row in any direction (horizontally, vertically, or diagonally).

• Telephone.

Shape a circle with the pupils. Tell something to the learner on your left in hushed tones. They whisper the word to the person to their left, then to the person to their right, and so on. The last person to hear the word must write it on the board; search to see if the word has changed! To give everybody a chance, swap positions.

• Categories

  . Give each group a series of flashcards and make them categorize them. Pet flashcards, for example, maybe categorized into four-legged and two-legged creatures, as well as those that can fly and those that cannot.

• Guess what it is.

  Several flashcards should be put on the desk. Describe one of the cards without naming its name, such as ‘It’s big….’ It flaunts its wings… It may not be able to climb, but it can run…’ A point is awarded to the team who correctly guesses the card.

• Backs to the board

  . Assign learners to A and B in pairs. Ask As to take a seat with their backs to the board and their backs to the Bs. On the board, write a phrase or a flashcard. With their backs to the floor, Bs must explain the term to their companion without disclosing what it is. The first A to correctly guess the term awards a point.

• Board rush

  . Place the flashcards on the whiteboard. Ask the students to form a line facing the board, a few steps apart, in groups. Learners would then sprint and hit the right flashcard, claim a flashcard.

• Send each group of students a deck of flashcards that contains two copies of each card. Request that they shuffle the deck and disperse the cards randomly, face down. Each player now has a deck of cards in front of them. Players take turns flipping over a card, identifying it, and putting it in the center of the table. The first player to scream “Snap!” wins all of the cards. When one player gets all of the cards, the game is over.

• Odd one out.

  Create a list of four terms on the desk, with one of them being the odd one out, such as cheeky, cheerful, curly, and sweet. ‘Curly’ is the odd man out when it applies to the facial appearance while the rest are all about personality. Encourage the students to build their own examples and bring them to the test.

• Send each group of students a deck of flashcards that contains two copies of each card. Request that they organize them in a grid on the table, face down. Each player takes a turn turning over two cards and showing what they are. They hold the cards if they turn over the same ones and try again. If the cards aren’t the same, they turn them over to the next player to play.

• Kim’s game.

  Place the flashcards on a table or on the monitor. Instruct the students to shut their eyes. Delete a card from the game. Request that they open their eyes to find the lost card. To make it much more complicated, progressively raise the number of cards you delete. Once you’ve explained the exercise, your students will play this game in groups using their own collection of flashcards.

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