Today I’m sharing a fun, relatively quick Halloween vocabulary game that helps students master a few of their trickier vocabulary words!
This spooky season, have students Go Fish for vocabulary words with the Halloween Go Fish Vocabulary Game. To ensure the Halloween Go Fish Vocabulary Game works at any grade level, this free download includes two sets of Go Fish cards. The first set of cards is for lower grade levels, and the second set is for upper grade levels.
Halloween Go Fish Vocabulary Game Rules*
1. Create cards with ten or twenty words that students don’t know well.
2. Have students play in groups of two to four, dealing out seven cards each if there are two players, six cards for three players and five cards for four players.
3. Cards that are not dealt go into the draw pile in the center of the table.
4. Starting clockwise, the first student asks another student if s/he has a card. However, instead of simply asking for the card by naming the vocabulary word on it, the student has to ask for the card by providing the definition for the word. For example, if a student wants the word “astute,” s/he has to ask, “Do you have a word that means smart?”
5. If the asked student doesn’t have the specific card requested, s/he says “Go Fish for Vocab!” and the student requesting the card must select from the draw pile.
The first person to get five pairs wins provided they can use the vocabulary words from each pair in one to three sentences. If they cannot, the round continues until another person gets five pairs.
*These are the rules as I’ve designed them but feel free to modify them as works best in your classroom.
