When it comes to vocabulary revision I always panic a little bit. All of the revision activities I know or find seem somewhat shallow. So this time I tried something new: I bombarded my students with 5 different activities which I presented to them as a Super Vocabulary Challenge. They worked as two teams the whole lessons and their aim was to score as many points as possible.
Preparation: choose target vocabulary and put it on separate pieces of paper. Fold them and put them in a bag or a hat.
Round one. Ss are divided in pairs, each pair works as a team (we successfully did it with 5 students in my class). A student draws papers from the bag and explain the word written on them to their teammates. It has to be in English and they have to do it within 40 seconds. If the team get it, it scores a point, if not they can have another try until the time is up. Then the bag goes to another team. I usually tell my students that I will retract points for using L1 as well as for using root words. It was amazing how much English they spoke! Calculate the number of the papers each team got. One word = one point. Write up the score on the board.
Round two: Ss put all the words back in the bag. This time the drill is the same, the only difference is that for explanation they can use only one word (like a Secret Word game). By this time students know most of the words, so it won't be as difficult as it seems.
Round three: The same bag. 40 seconds. No words. Mime it!
Round four: Put the papers in the bag and take it away. Students work on their own trying to remember all the words from the previous challenges. Then they write it up on the board. For each correctly spelled word teams get a point.
Round five: Leave the words on the board. In the next challenge students have to make sentences with it. For each words they get a point, in one turn they can say one sentence. The number of words used in a sentences is not limited. However, the team score the point only of the sentence is grammatically correct and makes sense. So if you have words like saucepan, grow up, achievement the sentence "His biggest achievement while growing up was inventing a saucepan" will get 3 points and the sentence "The saucepan is in the kitchen" - 1 and the sentence " They grown up in Minnesota" - none, because it is incorrect. When the word is used cross it out from the board, the game is finished when the last word is erased. By this time, those words you chose would be engraved on your students' brains :)
I'm sure you are all familiar with these games and activities on their own but mixing and matching never hurt! The first three rounds are basically a famous party game and the last one I'm sure I found somewhere in the Internet, but don't remember where! If you know, please give me a link.
Here are some other revision activities I used
A Homemade Revision Game by Sandy Millin
British Council Teaching English Revision activities
Preparation: choose target vocabulary and put it on separate pieces of paper. Fold them and put them in a bag or a hat.
Round one. Ss are divided in pairs, each pair works as a team (we successfully did it with 5 students in my class). A student draws papers from the bag and explain the word written on them to their teammates. It has to be in English and they have to do it within 40 seconds. If the team get it, it scores a point, if not they can have another try until the time is up. Then the bag goes to another team. I usually tell my students that I will retract points for using L1 as well as for using root words. It was amazing how much English they spoke! Calculate the number of the papers each team got. One word = one point. Write up the score on the board.
Round two: Ss put all the words back in the bag. This time the drill is the same, the only difference is that for explanation they can use only one word (like a Secret Word game). By this time students know most of the words, so it won't be as difficult as it seems.
Round three: The same bag. 40 seconds. No words. Mime it!
Round four: Put the papers in the bag and take it away. Students work on their own trying to remember all the words from the previous challenges. Then they write it up on the board. For each correctly spelled word teams get a point.
Round five: Leave the words on the board. In the next challenge students have to make sentences with it. For each words they get a point, in one turn they can say one sentence. The number of words used in a sentences is not limited. However, the team score the point only of the sentence is grammatically correct and makes sense. So if you have words like saucepan, grow up, achievement the sentence "His biggest achievement while growing up was inventing a saucepan" will get 3 points and the sentence "The saucepan is in the kitchen" - 1 and the sentence " They grown up in Minnesota" - none, because it is incorrect. When the word is used cross it out from the board, the game is finished when the last word is erased. By this time, those words you chose would be engraved on your students' brains :)
I'm sure you are all familiar with these games and activities on their own but mixing and matching never hurt! The first three rounds are basically a famous party game and the last one I'm sure I found somewhere in the Internet, but don't remember where! If you know, please give me a link.
Here are some other revision activities I used
A Homemade Revision Game by Sandy Millin
British Council Teaching English Revision activities
