[gardenko]

Does anyone have any interactive, whole-group vocab game ideas? These are science words that we started last week and they have a quiz on Thursday, but I know most of them are not studying as much as they should. We made flash cards and practiced with partners and they are supposed to review them every night...but these are 9 year olds, come on.
So..I wanted to play a review game with them tomorrow to help them get ready for the quiz. Anyone have a good one?

[Teach'n'Learn]

Jeopardy works well for vocabulary. You can make the definition be the "answer" and they have to say "What is [vocab word]?

[talgirl]

I know it sounds weird but here goes...
Write vocab words all over the chalkboard (scaatered and arranged in no specific order). Divide the class into two teams. 1 person from each team gets a fly swatter. You read the definition or clue to them and they race to the board. Whoever swats the correct word first gets a point for their team. You would have to make specific rules depending on your class, such as no contact/bodychecking each other, no running, etc. My kids loved playing this last year!

Another good review game is "Who/What am I?" The kids get divided into groups or partners, depending on how many vocab words there are. I assigned each group a word and they had to come up with 4 good clues for that word and write them down on a sheet of paper. When everyone was finished each group reads their clues and the rest of the class has to guess the answer. My kids loved it because they tried to stump the audience by providing not so obvious clues. It made it so the class really had to know their stuff in order to participate.

[karami]

I second Swat. I used it with my 5th graders last year and they loved it. I found cute fly swatters at a dollar store. One was a frog and the other was a butterfly. I wrote 9 words on the board and had one student stand on each side. With only 9 words they were within reach of both students. The down side was that I had to change the words fairly frequently.

[dolphin22]

I love the fly swatter game. I use it for math, but it works well for vocab. Could you use a beach ball and tape the vocab words to it and use it like you would use a clever catch ball for math?

[toniateach]

Okay....the first is wild...and is really only good once in a while. Assign partners one word. On one piece of paper they write the vocab. word and on the other they write the definition. Then they crumple the papers up into a ball. When everyone is done and you've been very specific about rules..you have a snowball fight with the papers. They don't hurt or break anything. After a minute or so, everyone gets one "snowball" and they have to find their partner.

The second is not a game but is a consistent activity in my room. We call it a four square. Divide a piece of paper into 4ths (sideways/hamburger)Put a circle in the middle and write the vocab word. In the first box they write the definition, the second- use it in a sentence, 3- opposite or synonyms whatever you're focusing on, and 4th a picture. IF they can do all of these things, they really know the word.

[bredler]

I put my students in pairs or groups of three(depending on how many words there are) and assign them one of the words. I give them around 3-5 minutes to come up with a way to act out the meaning of the word..i.e charades. Each performer gets to pick one person from the audience to guess the word they are acting out. If no one guesses the right answer then the performers give the word, the definition and explain what they were doing. I also take this time to ask for quick suggestions on ways that may have made it easier to guess. Lots of fun...great photo opportunity as well!!