This is a fun vocabulary activity you can use with your class once they have learned half the number of words as there are students (i.e., 20 students=10 words).
Divide the class in half. Give each student in Group A one of the words and repeat with Group B. This means that each word will be used twice. Each student has to find the following information for their word. You can change the information depending on the capabilities of the students.
- Part of speech
- Synonym
- Antonym
- Meaning of root word
- Meaning of suffix/prefix
- Definition
Give each child in Group B a grid containing all the words. Students pair up with a student from Group A.
The Group B student asks their Group A partner a question about the word, beginning at the top of the list. If at any point the student thinks they know the Group A person’s word from their grid, they can ask. If they are correct, they write the number of questions asked (e.g., if they couldn’t identify the word until they asked for the definition, they would score 6, but if they correctly identified the word after asking for the antonym, their score would be 3).
Give students a time limit – perhaps one minute. At the end of the time, all the Group B students move to the next Group A student. If the word wasn’t identified in the time period, a 0 is scored.
Once all the Group B students have met with all the Group A students, change over so that now the Group A students are asking the questions.
