I do this at the beginning of every Senior 1 class I teach. Normally takes around 5 minutes (although sometimes a debate will occur with the question of the week and cause this to last for 10-15 minutes!). I start out by showing them a word that they may or may not know. If anyone in the class can explain what it means in English, they get five participation points (I have them write their name in my notebook). If no one knows the word, we move on to the next powerpoint slide—with the vocab word used in a sentence. If someone can explain the word at this point, they get three points. If not, then we move onto the next slide—the word in Chinese. If they can explain it now, they get one point.
I also do a question of the week (covers any topic—such as what you would do if you had a million dollars, etc.) and give a few people the opportunity to say something and earn points (between 1-5 points depending on their answer). At the end of the month, the person with the most points in the class gets a little gift from me. The more points they have, the better the gift! Every class loves this and really gets into it (not to mention competitive—students will stand up and point at someone if they’re using a dictionary to look up the word!). At the end of the semester, I did a review of the WOW words that we had studied up to that point. This has been really successful and effective, so I highly recommend trying it out. It is also, incidentally, a great way to learn the names of your students.
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