10 Classroom Vocabulary Games For All Ages | Sadlier School

How Vocabulary Games Improve Student Vocabulary Retention

Games can be excellent tools to supplement and support vocabulary instruction. Using vocabulary games in your classroom allows students to practice vocabulary in fun but also impactful ways. Students love games because they are engaging and exciting, and teachers love games because they help students remember and use their words in new contexts.

Vocabulary games are social. Games engage students as they interact with each other and are challenged to use newly acquired vocabulary words. When you use vocabulary games in the classroom, students not only learn from and with one another, but also become more excited about and engaged in learning. Whether they are collaborating or competing, students must think creatively about vocabulary to play and win.

Using games to reinforce new vocabulary words and skills gives students the opportunity to practice these words in a variety of ways, which is super important to vocabulary! Familiar games can be varied and revisited for new sets of words, making games powerful practice tools in your classroom.

Roughly sixty studies done by Robert J. Marzano showed that, on average, the use of academic games in the classroom is associated with a 20 percentile point gain (Haystead & Marzano, 2009).

Games engage students at a high level and have a powerful effect on students’ recall of meanings. Games not only add a bit of fun to the teaching and learning process, but also provide an opportunity to build word meaning in a nonthreatening way. After the class has played a vocabulary game, the teacher should invite students to identify difficult words and go over the different aspects of them such as word parts, roots, synonyms, and antonyms in a whole-class discussion.

According to researcher William Nagy, there are three things you need for great vocabulary instruction every day: integration of vocabulary into different aspects of the day, reiteration to make words understood through repetition, and relevance to help students understand the connections among and the importance of words. Check out why they are important.

The following academic vocabulary games will help you integrate, reiterate, and connect for powerful—and fun—vocabulary practice.