vocabulary assignment ideas for high school

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12 Vocabulary Activities for High School

Words are power. Until you have a word for something, you can't think effectively about it. That's why every discipline has its own specialized vocabulary and why people who study the discipline must learn the vocabulary in order to be conversant.

So, vocabulary-building is as crucial in high school, college, and career as it was when students were first learning to read and write. It helps native speakers and English language learners, alike. You can use any (or all) of these creative word activities to help your students expand their vocabularies and their minds.

Four Vocabulary Builders

• Building Words asks students to define prefixes, roots, and suffixes and assemble them into new words, which they define.
• Understanding Context Clues teaches students strategies for understanding new terms by seeing how they are used.
• Using Context Clues provides students a passage for defining terms using context.
• Discovering Word Origins helps students think about how words evolve, changing meaning from language to language and context to context.

Five Usage Activities

• Usage Mnemonics inspires students to discover personal memory aids for distinguishing commonly confused words.
• Words in the Wild sends students to search the Internet for examples of correct usage of commonly confused words.
• Spell the Right Word requires one partner to use a commonly confused word correctly in a sentence and the other to spell the right form of the word.
• Would You Rather? has one partner use commonly confused word pairs to provide the other partner with options to choose from.
• Malapropism Mania! asks students to read humorous malapropisms and define both the incorrect word and the word that is meant.

Three Idiom Explorations

• Idiom Safari helps students find idioms "in the wild," as they are currently used on the Internet.
• Literal Idioms asks students to learn the figurative meaning of idioms and then use them literally .
• Pun-ishing Idioms teaches your students ways to create groaner jokes worthy of Dad.

Teacher Support:

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Standards Correlations:

The State Standards provide a way to evaluate your students' performance.

• LAFS.1112.L.3.4
• 110.38.c.2.B
• 110.39.c.2.B
• LA 12.1.5.a
• LA 12.1.3.a
• 110.38.c.2.A
• 110.39.c.2.A
• LA 12.1.5.e
• 110.38.c.8.F
• 110.39.c.8.F
• LAFS.1112.L.3.5
• LA 12.1.5.d
• 110.38.c.8.E
• 110.39.c.8.E

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Teachers face a variety of challenges on a day-to-day basis, but perhaps their biggest challenge is helping students become successful. A struggling student or struggling group of students is often blamed on the instructor or the instructor’s teaching. One way to ensure that all students experience the same levels of success is finding more innovative, engaging ways to teach in order to facilitate student participation in topics that might not be the most fun to learn. For instance, while high school vocabulary might not seem like the most interesting subject for students, learning new words and their meanings is essential to any student’s education.

But how does a teacher go about engaging students in learning high school vocabulary – a subject that students may not be the most passionate about? There are a variety of different methods teachers can deploy aside from the textbook and test method. Here’s a look at five high school vocabulary teaching methods that are fun, interesting and sure to engage students.

Vocabulary Bingo

After teachers put students through the typical curriculum (i.e., learn the word and what it means), it’s time to engage students in fun, lighthearted activities that will help them retain the information. One such activity is vocabulary bingo. Have the students make bingo cards, placing words they just learned in the various places on the card. Then, read the definitions of the word. If the students have that word, they’ll color in the box on their cards where it exists. This helps students put the definition with the word itself. Teachers can also reward students who complete bingo with prizes or extra credit points.

Word charting

The goal of teaching vocabulary is to expand a student’s word knowledge. One way to do this is by encouraging students to use vocabulary words in their lives. This is where word charting comes in. Teachers can encourage students to do this outside of the classroom while they’re at home. For instance, if students have just been taught the word “cacophony,” which means discordant sounds, encourage them to look for real-life scenarios to use it. Have students chart when they used it to describe something in their lives. For instance, a student may drop a dish on top of another dish in the sink and use “cacophony” to describe the sound it made. Give extra credit or prizes to the students that chart the most vocabulary words over a certain time in their proper contexts.

Short stories

Another way to make teaching vocabulary more fun is to have students create a short story or screenplay using the words they’ve just learned. Teachers can also make this a final project or midterm project. Typically, this will go over much better than a final exam, and students will be more willing to engage and get creative with such a task, especially if a large portion of their grade depends on it.

Write songs

To piggyback off the previous point, another way for students to better retain words is to have them write songs using them. This is also a project that will get the creative juices flowing with students. Break them up into groups and have them write lyrics with their new words in context of their definitions. Be sure to also offer extra credit for students who go above and beyond just writing lyrics, such as for groups that actually put music with their songs or record them to play them back to the rest of the class. Writing poetry with newly learned words is another option that could fall within this category.

Games have proved to be a better way to engage students and help them retain information in the classroom. And one game that could apply to new vocabulary words is Pictionary. Have students divide into groups and then diagram word definitions as best as they can, as their peers attempt to guess them. Another game might consist of students acting out words in short skits for classmates to guess. Such games are fun and are sure to produce a lot of laughs as students learn new words.

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Categorized as: Tips for Teachers and Classroom Resources

Tagged as: Engaging Activities ,  High School (Grades: 9-12) ,  Language Arts

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How to Teach Vocabulary in Secondary Classrooms

So you want to upgrade your vocabulary game. This time, you’re serious. You’re done with the worksheets and memorization games that leave both you and students desiring more. Where should you begin? Keep reading. I’ve got plenty of unique ideas for how to teach vocabulary in secondary classrooms (meaningfully and effectively).

These blog posts should help you to create a program you are proud of — one you love! Vocabulary is one of my favorite topics to teach, but it has taken me a while to get comfortable with it.

I hope that you find some helpful strategies, activities, and tips to increase student learning in this collection of articles.

How to Design a Meaningful Vocabulary Program

Vocabulary needs to be more than an afterthought. If you’ve never really fallen in love with the way you’ve taught vocabulary, this post will help you to design a program you will be proud of! It’s full of fresh ideas for vocabulary routines, keeping teens engaged, and assessing meaningfully.

Retention: Not Memorization

Focus on helping students learn new words instead of memorizing them. In this post, you’ll find recommendations for the amount of words you should assign, how to practice the words, and how to make assessments meaningful. The goal is have students who come back to you saying, “I am finding our vocabulary words in my independent reading!”

Integrating Vocabulary with Reading and Writing

Research shows that vocabulary is most meaningful when it’s taught from an integrated approach. Show students how vocabulary connects with reading and writing by using these three best-practice strategies.

From Basic to Deep Understanding

Help students move from basic understanding of words to a deeper, more analytical view. If you need some motivation and specific philosophical approaches to worthwhile vocabulary instruction that directly relates to all content areas, read this.

Brain-Based Learning

Get students to make brain-based connections with their vocabulary words. You know why it’s important, but you’re lacking specific takeaway strategies to make it happen. If you’re wondering how to teach vocabulary with the brain in mind, you’ll love these tips. This post details five vocabulary activities to use in your secondary classroom.

Engaging Activities

I love putting students in the driver’s seat with vocabulary instruction. It shouldn’t be “sit and get.” Vocabulary learning should sound noisy, look messy, and feel fun. This post outlines five more strategies for getting students actively involved in practicing their vocabulary words.

Differentiating Meaningfully

I have a passion for differentiating learning in meaningful ways. If you know you want to switch up your approach but don’t know how to teach vocabulary differently, try incorporating some of these simple yet creative techniques. Plus, you’ll read about an extension activity that will allow students to focus on how they learn best.

Picture Associations

If you aren’t using pictures to teach vocabulary, this one is a game changer. Helping students to make meaningful visual connections with their words takes vocabulary retention to a whole new level. But! There are so many ways to use pictures with vocab. Read about a handful of options in this post.

No matter the content area, students benefit from scaffolding with vocabulary. Word walls are a research-based approach to helping students remember new words longer. This post has some helpful tips for creation.

Sure, your first attempt at incorporating some of these strategies might not be perfect. But, you will laugh. I promise. And, students will remember more words. Making vocabulary instruction meaningful should be a top priority. Literacy matters. Words matter. Teaching students to love words is part of developing a literacy culture. Let’s seize the opportunity.

5 Ways to Incorporate Vocabulary in Writing

Go beyond the expected. Story writing? We can get more creative and informative! Students benefit from using writing to practice using their vocabulary words. School associations, RAFTs, gallery walks, and more. Read about five engaging options in this post I wrote for teachwriting.org.

10 Examples for Introducing Vocabulary Words

Choosing vocabulary words can be tricky! Looking for specific word nerd inspiration? Here are 10 words that all students should learn before graduating, along with inspiration for teaching them.

RELATED RESOURCE:

Use these brain-based, differentiated learning tools to help students remember words long after the unit is over. They can be used more than once per year, and there are enough activities that students will never get bored. Pick and choose what works for your students’ needs and your classroom culture.  Some of the activities included also make for great back up sub plans.

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5 Vocabulary Games That Build Content Knowledge

Engaging games support student understanding of subject-specific vocabulary and  help  ensure retention of content knowledge.

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Subject-specific vocabulary goes hand-in-hand with a deep and meaningful knowledge of content. It allows us to engage with that subject, unlocks understanding, and promotes clear and precise communication. 

At the end of a topic or unit of work, I like to encourage my students to play with the words they’ve learned. I use five different word-association games that get students to recall, describe, explain, listen, and verbalize the subject-specific vocabulary from that topic or unit of work. In my experience, the lighthearted nature of these games provides students with a fun, safe, and low-stakes environment where they feel more confident to just have a go.

Although the examples I’ve given are specific to my subject (biology) and age group (high school), I hope these games are also applicable to other subjects and student ages and provide engaging ways to help students master vocabulary. 

1. From A to Z 

How it works: For this five-to-eight-minute game, students work in small groups (two to four) and have to write down a word related to a topic for every letter of the alphabet. For example, if the topic is cells, “A” might be “apoptosis,” “B” might be “binary fission,” “C” might be “cytoplasm,” and so on. For many topics, students might struggle to find a word for every letter (and sometimes you will too). You can support them and/or allow them to get more abstract or silly. 

This is great as a starter activity for a lesson that falls at the end of the topic. I like to keep it visible and accessible throughout the lesson for students to add to if inspiration strikes them later on. 

2. Articulate 

Based on the popular board game Articulate, this 10-to-20-minute game (depending on the size of your class) gets students to describe and define key terms.

How it works: Prepare a number of cards containing four words related to a topic or subject and one silly or unrelated word. Students will work in teams of three or four. When it’s the first team’s turn, one student from that team stands at the front. The teacher gives that student a card, and the student has to describe the word to their team without ever saying the word, or variations of the word. I usually allow each team one free pass per round. The number of points that the team gets is equal to the number of words that the team guesses in 30 seconds. Teams rotate and continue until every player has had a turn. 

3. Just One 

The aim of this 15-to-20-minute game is to get students to make connections between key vocabulary words. 

I first played the Just One game with my family and then modified it by making cards specific to vocabulary in my subject so that I could use it in my classroom. 

How it works: Prepare a number of cards with five words related to a unit, topic, or subject (sometimes I reuse the ones I use in Articulate). Three to seven students work in a group. One student chooses a number between one and five and turns around, facing away from their classmates. 

The first card is shown to the other students in the group, and without conferring, they write down one word (on a mini whiteboard) that relates to the corresponding word on the card. For example, if the clue is “muscle,” possible related words might be “movement,” “skeletal,” or “tissue.” All of the students reveal their mini whiteboards to their group—all except the first student. 

If two students have written the same word, both words get erased (this encourages students to think beyond the most obvious links). Finally, the first student turns around to view the remaining words and has one chance to guess what the original word on the card was. Repeat the process with a new student guessing and a new card until everyone has had at least one turn. You can appeal to students’ competitive natures by giving them a score to aim for. So, for a group of five, everyone has two turns, and the aim is to achieve a total score of 7 or more out of 10.

4. Telephone Pictionary

For this 20-to-30-minute game, students use diagrams to explain key vocabulary.

How it works: Create groups of about six to eight students, ideally sitting in a circle. Each student is given a note card or piece of paper with a different phrase or term on it (examples I have used include “human evolution,” “the kidneys” and “cell membrane”). 

The student has 30–45 seconds to sketch a picture to represent the phrase or term and then paperclips their sketch over the word so that it isn’t visible to the next student. This picture gets passed on to the next student, who (on a new card or piece of paper) writes a phrase or term that they think was given to the student before them based on the picture drawn. Then they use their sketch to cover the previous one. This continues around the group, alternating between drawing and writing until it returns to the original student. 

This is happening simultaneously for all students—so everyone is always doing something. Once the cycle returns to the original student, they lay out all the cards, reveal the original phrase or term, and choose a winning contributor for their round—usually either the most accurate or the funniest one. 

5. Mind Meld 

This two-to-eight-minute game gets students verbalizing and making links between vocabulary words. It works well at the end of a lesson when you have a couple of spare minutes.

How it works: Students are put into pairs, and on the count of three, they say a word related to a given subject or unit. For example, in the topic “cells,” one student might say “cellulose,” and another student might say “eukaryotic.” On the count of three, they then simultaneously say another word that they think matches the two words just said. Now, one might say “plant” and another might say “cell wall.” This keeps going until both students say the same word at the same time. Words can’t be repeated at any time.