A Vocabulary Game: Vocabulary Dominoes

Interested in a vocabulary activity to help students improve their use of collocations?

Level: All
Materials Needed: Paper
Preparation: Prepare 28 domino cards for each group (see sample domino cards template below). Write a part of the collocation on one card and the other half on another so that students form meaningful and accurate collocations when they put the domino cards together.
Interaction Patterns: Group work
Time: 30 min.s

Procedure:
-    Students work in groups of four.
-    Give a set of domino cards to each group. Each student draws four domino cards.
-    The student with the domino card on which “START” is written starts the activity by laying that card on the table.
-    The student who has the domino card which completes the word combination on the table puts it next to that domino card.
-    Students take turns laying their dominoes when they find the correct matches.
-    The student who gets rid of all the dominoes first wins the game.   

Variation:
•    You may give the instructions of the activity in written form to make it more understandable.
•    Students may work in pairs.
•    You may design various domino cards. If you want, you may have word-definition combinations on the dominoes. Or, you may write word-word combinations on the domino cards, which will be a nice practice activity for collocations.
•    You may want to conduct this as an activity rather than a game. If done as an activity, there will be no winners or losers, which will enable students to work on all the dominoes and thus all the vocabulary items.
•    You may give students domino templates and they may prepare their own dominoes in groups. Then, they may swap the sets of domino cards they prepare with the other groups and play the game.  

Personal Comment: This is a fun activity designed to attract students’ attention to word combinations, while they are learning new words.

To find more vocabulary activities, you may refer to my activity book, The Activist.