Learning Vocabulary
By Eve Harrison
Age Range: 5 to 11
Age Range: 5 to 11
These activities can be used in small groups during wet playtime. They involve a bit of preparation but once made can be re-used again and again.
- Buy a Jenga set or that straw game where you have to pick the straw out without ruining the model. Label the blocks or straws with your vocabulary for the term and play the game in the usual way. I suggest typing the words out on the PC (font 8 or 9). The children can read and repeat the words, make a word list/bank and ask you what they mean or they can use them as a revision tool of previously learned words. You can colour code the words printing them on different coloured paper so that students know which group they belong to. For example if it is a noun, adjective or verb or if it belongs to a category like objects found at home, or a foodstuff.
- Label furniture in the classroom.
- Make a magical mystery box with objects inside. Get the children to feel the objects and then make a guess at what it is. Have labels ready which you can stick to the object and later put on a display table. The children who guess correctly can stand at the front holding the object up or can become group leaders by asking 'Qu'est que c'est?' with other group members responding 'C'est u(e) ...'
- Play word bingo. Get the children to make their own flashcards with pictures on to take home and learn.
- Have a competition to make up silly mnemonics to help the class remember the order of the months or days of the week.
- Take the register in the target language giving each child a number. Give them names in that language too!
- Stick words to a small football and use in PE. Words belonging to a same family can be passed from child to child around/across the circle. Put a 'piggy in the middle' to add some variety.
- Create a relay game picking up words in English or French and matching them.
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