Vocabulary development is essential for early learners. Children have to use vocabulary in their every day lives. After listening to the podcast by Dr. Baker and Dr. Susan Nueman where they discuss using categories to teach vocabulary to preschoolers, I wanted to try to come up with some other ways we, as teachers, can introduce and teach vocabulary to our students in a fun and inviting way.
The first game that came to mind was Scrabble. When I was an ESL teacher in Korea, the older children loved playing Scrabble. Then I started thinking. Can a primary student really get into such an adult game? Is there a way to make it fun for them too? I'm still stumped on whether this would be something they would enjoy.
A type of game that I always loved as a kid were puzzles. I think that students would really love doing crosswords or word searches. You could make this fun by using clues to what the vocabulary word is instead of just giving them the word to find or fit in the boxes. Another puzzle type game that would be fun is hidden messages. Just like Ralphie from A Christmas Story liked to decode things, some students in your class will have the same interest. Hidden messages are the way to do that!
Kids can also play bingo with sight words. The teacher can have different students read the words out loud and if they have them on their bingo cards, they can cover them up. They could win an eraser or pencil if they win bingo.
Another great word game that my students loved playing in Korea was called Word Work. I would put the students into groups of 4 or 2 and have them change one letter in a word to make a new word. I would see how many different words they could make in a 3 minute time period. This also helped them understand word families.
I hope some of these games are helpful in the classrooms of fellow teachers! Let's keep the fun in vocabulary development!!
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