Word brainstorms for vocabulary building

You can brainstorm words on your own or in a group. A class can race to find which person or group gets the most words, or the biggest variety of words. Or the funniest words. Brainstorming games are loud and a lot of fun in classes.

1. Fine weather

• How many weather-related words do you know?
• Build word trees or word lists for ‘good’ and ‘bad’ words about the weather.
• Do you know more negative or positive weather words?

My negative list was more than four times larger than my positive list!

2. Anagrams

Anagrams are words made out of using the same letters of another word, only in a different order. For example:

   cat -> act
   cafe -> face

What anagrams can you find of the following words:

1 anagram: earth, dusty, ring, dawn, thicken, cheating, disease, seaside, salesman
2 anagrams: eat, care, skin, west, arm
3 anagrams: team, plates, star

3. Descriptive

List five adjectives (each) that describe :

• you (short, quiet, … )
• your best friend (bubbly, kind, … )
• your favourite place (peaceful, sunny, … )
• your favourite book
• your favourite drink
• the view from your window right now
• the house you grew up in
• a scary situation
• cats
• how you are feeling right now

4. We are all too stressed

• What other words do you associate with the word “stress“?
• Write a list, or draw a word tree or mind map with all the words you can think of.

5. Work, work, work

What words or phrases do you associate with the word ‘work’?

Divide your words and phrases into two lists or word trees: positive (good) and negative (bad). Do you have mainly positive or negative words and phrases? Try to balance your lists!