How excited would you be to see your students pouring through text, dissecting words, and doing it with enthusiasm? I was very excited to see just that while conducting this activity with my groups of 2nd, 3rd, and 4th grade ESL students.
I first gave my students a reading passage and a highlighter. The passage that I chose had an inferencing activity and we refreshed this reading strategy (Which we have worked on many time before). I read the passage aloud to the students while they highlighted words they did not know. As we finished reading each paragraph, we discussed the words in question. After completing the reading and inferencing activity we then moved to the fun part, Hangman. Using the Eno board and the Hangman game in the Easiteach program installed on our Mac Books, I entered one of the words we had discussed as a class. The Easiteach version of Hangman allows for you to enter a hint as well; here I entered the definition of the word.
What followed was a highly interactive vocabulary-word game. The kids worked together as a team going through the text to figure out the mystery word while using traditional Hangman strategies. You can use any interactive Hangman program for this activity and any reading passage. I like the reading passages from http://www.extrareading.com/ . They tend to include a variety of vocabulary and are of high interest. The readings are based on particular reading strategies.
Hope that you too can use this activity to create a fun vocabulary activity with your students, having fun is the easiest and best way to learn!
