Assign pairs of learners a word to research and teach the rest of the class. There are several things that learners could research and it is advisable to model this first.
You could and should get your learners to:
- Write learner friendly definitions
- Identify the part of speech
- Find synonyms of the word
- Find antonyms of the word
- Find examples of the word
- Find non examples of the word
Once the pairs have completed their research they then teach the rest of the class their word, hence becoming ‘word experts.’
I’ve used this classroom strategy to teach content words from different subject areas.
When pairs are presenting their word I make the other learners in the class record what they are being told. This helps to develop a deeper understanding of different words.
EAL in the Daylight 