I'm always looking for ways to teach new vocabulary and spelling as well. Does anybody have any good ideas that have been dynamic and have shown results:

One thing that I do is I made "white erase boards" for each of my students. It's actually a piece of white construction paper covered in transparent contact paper. I give them the board and I dry-erase marker and then I show them a flash card and they have to write the word on the erase board and hold it up for me to see. This way I can check everyone and I don't have any straglers who are just slipping by without me noticing.

Hello!!

That sounds like a really good way of teaching and you aren't wasting lots of paper. Excellent for us and the planet!!

I don't have any super ideas for teaching vocabulary and I do like your idea....so will try it with my older kids and see if they can spell the word that I hold up.

If I teach vocabulary...then it's usually with a Bingo game.

Sometimes I get the kids to select their own words from my flashcards ( fruit or other subjects ) and then get them to draw a picture and the word and then we play the Bingo game.

This way, it helps some kids remember the word because they drew it and for others, it's because of the drawing and the writing the actual word.

I'm sure other people can give you more ideas.

Thanks for sharing your idea with me.

Thanks Fifi for the reply. I'm afraid my methods are getting a bit redundant. I spend 10 hours a week with my class and I'm focusing a lot on vocabulary building and basic grammar tenses. They are only 10 years old, so I really have to keep things dynamic so I don't lose them and have them running all over the room!

If you think of any creative ideas, share with me!

Dear Tonif,

Another teacher has just given me a fun game to play called Slamsandwich.

You make up slices of bread that you should laminate...as lots of hands touching the game will ruin it....then you can have lots of different, weird and wonderful sandwiches.
You can mix food with umbrellas, elephants, spiders, whatever you want to teach in your sandwich.

I'm going to just stick to one subject at the moment...and that will be food such as vegetables...but as the kids get to learn them...I'll add a mixture of other words for them to learn.

How to play the game: You can have teams as I'm going to do that or choose one person and have the others add the food.

I think I will start off with just 5 items in my sandwich...depending on the age....and I'll pick one person ( either someone individual or a captain of a team ) and get Sandra to add some cucumber, Anne to put some tomatoes, Tom to put some onions, Alice to put some lettuce, Mathilde to add the mayonnaise...and then put another slice of bread on top.

I then get the person I chose...William to tell me the contents of the sandwich but in the correct order starting with the slice of bread at the bottom and finishing with the slice of bread at the top!! :=)

You have to print up small flashcards ( Mark has a good selection in the vegetable section as well as some other food ) and laminate them too so that they don't get dirty and ruined.

You can then add silly things in your sandwich if you want them to learn about clothes, animals, furniture, etc. The other teacher told me she only puts 8 things in her sandwiches as that seems to be about all the kids can remember for the moment.

You can place the cards facing downwards once they have learnt some words and that gives them the surprise element... they don't know what they are going to put in their sandwich.

There's also another fun game where you sing the Ketchup and Mayonnaise song and get them to make up a huge sandwich on the floor!! :=)

I'll see if I can find the words but you'll have to try and sing it yourself and I can't help you with that. :=) Only play it if you feel you can control your class!! How many kids do you teach?

You can then get them to be waiters and clients at a restaurant if you have made copies of your food. I'd like to try that before we finish at the end of May as that could be a good way of seeing how much food they remember.

Kids like role play and they learn very fast with simple dialogues too.

Anyway, I do hope that you've got some more ideas for teaching your vocabulary and games are a fun way and kids learn when they're having fun.

Good luck and let me know how you get on with the Slamwich Game.

Just thought of another game I play and that is getting the kids in teams. I tell them a word and get them, either to draw or write the word on the blackboard.

Kids seem fascinated about being able to actually write on the blackboard in Switzerland!!

Again, I do this teams as they get to work together and it helps promote co-operation between them....that is the idea...it doesn't always work.

I played that with the Body Game....we did about two lessons and some liked it and others didn't...they soon get bored with some games but it helped them learn to draw a Monster with four legs, 3 big eyes, etc.

Other kids wanted to keep playing it for a third time....so you have to really see what appeals to your kids but the majority of kids love playing games on the school blackboard and it saves lots of preparation and you don't waste paper either. :D

You can have spelling races, play hangman, get two people to write out a word that another student spells to them!!

These games are wonderful on a whiteboard or a blackboard and have been a huge success with my older kids.

You can also get one person in a team to dicate something ( if you want to teach words and prepositions...this is a great game) and it helps if you have already drawn a bed with a bedside table, a wall or a carpet on the floor...anything you like...and the student then says: " Draw a spider on the wall"....or you can have them dictate this way: " There is a bed in the bedroom. On the bed, I can see a spider."

My kids are learning their prepositions very fast this way and I've drawn up four different rooms in a house and got them to dictate animals or other objects in each room...but especially getting them to use on and under and in each time...such as;"There's an elephant in the bath in the bathroom".

Try exercises like this to make the lesson fun and this way, they don't have to run around the room to enjoy the lesson.
You can easily use your whiteboards for this game!!

Good luck and I hope you can use some of my ideas.

Those are some great ideas.

I made some single sheet house cutaways for my own students. They are a little different from what was said since all of the items are already drawn in, but I thought they might be helpful. I just uploaded them to the house flashcard page.
www.mes-english.com/flashcards/house.php

They will unfortunately waste paper though.

However, laminate them and use them again and again.

:roll: I like making memory games. You can relate any topic/skill to the memory game. Put a vocab. word on one card and the meaning/picture of that word on another card. Then the student needs to match up the word/picture to the meaning/picture.

Thanks for the house cut outs Mark they will be helpful
Sue

Dear Marc,

Those cutouts of the house will really come in handy with the older kids and probably, even the younger ones too, as well as my adults and teens.

As soon as you get kids learning the prepositions...the grammar is in place for later on and they are making short sentences that are usually correct.....and you can turn anything into a fun game.

Yes, the only problem is the waste of paper.....but if they use pencils, they can always rub out again and use the page a few times.

I'm getting my kids today to draw in their 24 Bingo squares and then we will play the Bingo game!! Of course, I have to go and some sweets as that is part of the game....but they don't have Bingo games very often because I told them they are with me to learn English and not to just eat sweets!!

Today, it's a mixture of fruit and vegies from your site, Marc. I'm using the small game cards to play this Bingo game and then hoping to re-use them in the Slamsandwich game next week.

I noticed in your small fruit cards that you didn't put "a wild card" and my kids just love playing the memory games....because of your "[b]wild cards"[/b] and they will be so disappointed not to see some in your cards with the fruit. Was there a reason why you didn't put a "wild fuit card?"

Anyway, many thanks for those blank houses...they will come in handy... and I use so much of your super material ...that I've thrown away lots of rubbish in my files!!

Here is a tic tac toe spelling idea: http://www.lessonplanspage.com/LATicTac ... ling15.htm
and a nice "Toothy board game":
http://www.eduplace.com/rdg/hmsv/3/handson/page194.html

Another 40 ideas for spelling practice:
http://www.aoshouston.org/Documents/Lea ... elling.doc

... and a SHARK SPELLING GAME - a version of the traditional 'Hangman' game - a good way to revise the spelling of any new vocabolary.

I prepare three kinds of boards for playing in small groups or in pairs, but also a play with the whole class is possible.
There is a little black white worksheet , too, to be used instead of game boards. Pupils take turns to guess one letter in the word given from one of the players. If the letter is in the name, write it down if not, draw a little 'stick figure' starting along the circle spaces towards the shark jaws. Pupils must gues all the letters correctly before the shark eat the stick figure.

I love playing this and the students really dig it to. Put students in two groups.

Write all the vocab that you want to teach/review on the board with the first language equivalent (in my case, Japanese). Basically, if you say and English word, one student from each group races to circle the Japanese translation. Then the Japanese teacher says a word in Japanese and 2 new students race to circle the English translation.

Keep this really high paced by giving students a time limit to get to the front of the room. I usually count down from 5 and if they weren't fast enough to get to the starting place, they lose a point. (however, it is only a threat and I never have to take points from their team. Instead start creeping toward the blackboard. They usually start rushing when they see me going for the eraser. )

This is more for the vocabulary, but Pictionary is quite fun for my students. I have classes of 30 or so, so I split them up in 3 teams. Their teammates take turns going to the front of the class and seeing what I want them to draw. After that, they start. As they are drawing, the team tries to yell out what answer they think it is. To keep it somewhat quiet tho, your team is out if you guess the wrong answer.