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Writer's pictureEwa Górna

How to help the little ones revise vocab

Updated: Feb 12, 2022


Long time no see 😅 Finially the bliss called winter break is here and with it more time for me to write. Today I'll show you how students from the youngest groups in my school revise and practise vocabulary.

I divided vocabulary in my school into basic and extended. Basic vocabulary comes from the books the students are using in some lessons: Kid's Box from Cambridge University Press. If you've never worked with it, it's well worth a try, if not for anything else then for the brilliant songs that come with it. My all time favourites is "Cows in the kitchen":


Extended vocabulary comes from the vocabulary studying system I've developed in my school. I'm going to write about it one day, but not just yet.

There isn't a lot that kids have to learn when it comes to basic vocab. It's the bare minimum I want our student to cover before they move on to grade 4. All the words are divided into grade 1 material. grade 2 material, and grade 3 material. This does not mean that a 2nd-grader can't choose to work with grade 3 vocabulary, or that a 3rd-gradee can't revise vocab from grade 2. This is what it looks like:


The booklet at the front consists of all the words. It can be used to study the vocabulary items or as a control card for the other activity which you can see in the plastic envelopes. Let's see what's in them:


Students match the pictures with the word using small velcro dots. They can either read the word or listen to it's pronunciation using PenPal (more on PenPal here). Once the task is finished students check if they did it correctly using the booklet. They also repeat the words using PenPal again.

I made the pictures using the sticker section of the book. I photocopied, laminated, and cut it into separate pictures. I keep the pictures in a smaller plastic envelope inside the bigger envelope.

The basic vocabulary sets are available throughout the school year on the English shelves. Students can work with them during self study time as many times as they want. Teacher's involvement is practically non-existent in the whole activity, as is the case with most of my educational materials. If the teacher sees that one of the kids lags behind with the vocab, he or she has a ready material that can be assigned to such a kid. Teachers can also easily monitor kids progress using the sets ... and the progress is there, trust me!!! 😉

Have fun creating,

Ewa :)

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