5 Fun Vocabulary Games for All Levels

Teaching vocabulary can be boring, but here are five easy games to make it more fun for both you and your students!

1. Name 5!

“Name 5!” gives students 30 seconds to think of five words that belong to a given category. For example, if the category is "fruit," your student has to name five fruits: e.g. "apples," "bananas," "cherries," "berries," and "grapes."

Just make sure to choose a category that's appropriate to the student's level. Here are some ideas to get you started.

If your student finds the game too easy or difficult, here are some adjustments you can make.

• Give them more time (e.g. one minute) or less time (e.g. 15 seconds).
• Ask them to name three things or seven things instead of five.
• Make categories more general or specific (e.g. "high-paying jobs" instead of "jobs," "farm animals" instead of "animals")

Don’t forget you can also play too! Students can give you a category, and you can then teach them some new vocabulary when you “name 5.”

2. Who/What Am I?

“Who/What Am I?” is a guessing game. Here’s how it goes:

1. You and your student decide on a category: e.g. famous singers, wild animals, countries, etc.
2. Think of an item from that category and don’t tell the other person.
3. One of you then asks yes/no questions to figure out what the other person has thought of. We recommend you go first, so students get an idea of what kinds of questions to ask.
4. Switch! (Let the student guess who/what you are.)

Just like Name 5, you can adjust the difficulty level with the categories you choose. For example, with beginners, start with easy vocabulary and questions such as:

• "Can you fly?"
• "Do you live in the forest?"
• "Do you eat grass?"

3. Describing Pictures - with a twist!

For this activity, you will need pictures. You can open a Describing Pictures lesson or use a stock photo. Depending on the level of your student, you can choose one of the following ideas.

For Beginners, one of our tutors recommends asking them to quickly say two or three words that describe the given picture. 

Example words: funny, colorful

For Intermediate learners, you can increase the number of words or ask them to make one long and complex sentence that describes the essential parts of the image. "This photo shows a young person who's had smiley faces painted on their soles and who's lying down in the grass on a sunny day."  

With Advanced learners, you can also have discussions based on the pictures they described.

If we take the photo above, for example, you could ask:

• Why do you think they got their soles painted?
• What does the artist or photographer want to express with this photo?
• What title would you give this photo?

4. Hide and Reveal

Hide and Reveal is a game where you cover up a picture and slowly reveal it while the student guesses what it is. For example, for the picture below, the student might make guesses like “chorus” “music lesson” or “singing practice.”

Here's how you can play this game during an Engoo lesson.

1. Ask the student to close their eyes while you prepare the picture.
2. Choose a picture from a Describing Pictures lesson.
3. Click on the picture to enlarge it. Whiteboard tools will appear at the top.
4. Select the "filled rectangle" tool and cover up the photo with a rectangle.
5. Ask your student to open their eyes.
6. Erase the rectangle bit by bit and tell your student to start guessing!

You can play this game with students of all ages, but we think kids would be most excited about it.

5. Whiteboard Scrabble

We all know the famous game of Scrabble! With the help of our whiteboard, we can play a simplified version of the game in the lesson room. Choose a random word (you can use a word generator) and then start branching out to other vocabulary items.

We recommend keeping caps lock on during the game and inserting a space in between every letter to keep things neat. You and your student can also choose different colors to keep track of who played which word.

Since we don’t have a pool of letters to choose from, the game will be a lot easier than actual Scrabble, so to make it more challenging, you can add rules like:

• Only use words that have at least five letters.
• Only use words that are related to a theme: e.g. movies, food, around town, etc.
• Don't use certain letters. (With advanced students, you might pick some of the most common letters in the English language, such as E or S.)
• The time limit is 30 seconds per turn.
• Whoever makes the longest word wins.

👋 That’s It For Now!

We hope you'll enjoy playing these games with your students!

This post was written by Adela.