Section 5: Teaching Skills

Chapter 27: Building Vocabulary

When it comes to building vocabulary in each class, there are many strategies and methods that you can employ in order to help your students learn. The best way that we have found to present vocabulary is in a similar format each time when you start and end the lesson. Presenting vocabulary in a manner like this is simple and effective: Teacher asks for the students to repeat after them: “Apple” / “Apple” / “It’s an apple.” / “What is this?” And elicit their full response on the last question to say “It’s an apple.” Presenting the vocabulary as previously described gives your students a consistent way to hear the vocab and helps them have a comfortable way to participate and to say the vocabulary. After presenting the vocabulary to your student it is important to focus more on games and other things for the students to remember the vocabulary of the lesson. For instance, taping up your flashcards on the wall and having students run to each word as you say it and then repeating once they touch the flashcard or laying out the flashcards on the floor and giving your students pointers or fly swatters (Make sure they are nothing they can hurt each other with. Know how your students will react and be careful!) and once you say the vocabulary, they have to quickly put their pointer or fly swatter on the vocabulary flashcard. At the end of all of our units we will talk about more games to play in the classroom, but now it is important to remember that you should pair games and activities with your lessons in order to keep the students interested and motivated. Building vocabulary can be made simple and easy for the students with the right planning and the right resources.