Working with VOCABULARY

As you know I'm working with 1st graders and I've seen they finish their first year of language instruction without learning enough vocabulary to cope with more demanding courses. It seems people concentrate too much on form but I think vocabulary instruction is not given the importance it deserves... This year, one of my objectives is to work mainly with vocabulary areas and I'm constantly revising and recycling them.

A funny way of doing so is using games in the classroom. I know I'm not saying anything new to anyone... but everyone agrees and then they just do little about it... In a previous post I wrote about working with a jeopardy game in class. Students loved it! This time I'm going to remind you of a well known, easier to implement game: BINGO!

This afternoon I didn't work since school was closed so I decided to prepare a Bingo with words we've been working with. My students - and I guess any student at this level - enjoy playing Bingo. So, it may take some hours to make a set of cards... but then it's just laminating them and you'll have a set for many years to come!

Firstly, I downloaded the pictures from Google images. In this case, I wrote "clothes+colouring" and there you are! Lots of pictures in black and white to choose the ones you like best. Then, just arrange them in a grid. Print it and that's all!

I like this game a lot since it's an easy and enjoyable way of revising and you can prepare sets for dozens of topics. So far, I've worked with numbers, the weather, school objects, colours, clothes, nationalities, opposites and some other adjectives to describe appearance and let me tell you, student actually study to be the winners! And they keep on asking me when they are playing again...

I include a picture to show you how helpful it is to have a printer and some glue at hand!