Keeping Vocabulary Fresh!

 

Keeping Vocabulary Fresh – Beyond the Word List

Let’s be honest—memorizing vocab lists isn’t anyone’s idea of fun. And if students don’t use the words, they’re going to forget them in about five minutes. So how do we make vocabulary actually stick?

Here are some practical tools that have worked for me:

• Personal Connections: Ask students to create sentences about their own lives using new words. Example: instead of just learning “adventure,” they write “Last summer my family went on an adventure to El Yunque.”

• Visual Word Walls: Put words on the board or wall with drawings, doodles, or even memes that students make themselves. Visuals make words way easier to remember.

• Vocabulary Battles: Divide the class into teams. Say a word, and they have to quickly give a definition, a synonym, or a sentence. A little competition makes it exciting.

The goal is to make words feel alive. Vocabulary isn’t about lists—it’s about stories, jokes, and real conversations. When you teach words in ways that connect to students’ daily lives, they actually want to use them. That’s the tool.