Resources

Resource 1: Activities that help students to remember new words

• Two Words, One Sentence: Students need to use words in order to learn about how the words work with other words, so this activity encourages the students to produce language. Write up two of the words you want to review on the board and put students into pairs or groups. Ask the students to produce a single sentence that includes both words. Get some of the students to tell you their sentences. Choose the best one and write it on the board for the students to copy, then repeat this process with two more words.
• Five-word Story: Draw a grid on the board with a collection of words that your students have recently started learning. Put the students into small groups and ask them to select five of the words. Once the groups have chosen five words each, tell them to create a very short story that includes all five words. Once they have created their stories, put students into pairs to share their stories or get someone from each group to tell the class their story.
• Three Meanings: This is a quick and useful way to use the glossaries in the textbook to revise vocabulary. Ask the students to shut their books. Write a word on the board, then read three definitions from the textbook glossary. Ask the students to guess which is the correct one. If you have the space in your classroom or outside the classroom, you can make this more fun and ask the students to stand up. If the first definition is correct, they go to the right side of the classroom; if the second is correct, they move to the centre of the classroom; and if the third is correct, they move to the left side.
• Word Bag: This is an ongoing activity that you can do throughout the school year. At the end of each chapter, give your students small slips of paper. Ask them to write words they need or want to learn on one side of the slip, and information about the word on the other side (such as a translation, example sentences, grammatical information and so on). At the end of the class, collect all the slips of paper and put them in a bag. Regularly take random words out of the bag and ask questions about them, such as ‘What does it mean?’ or ‘Give me an example sentence.’ These quick revision quizzes will help your students to remember words from lessons.