Word Association Games and Activities

Procedure 1

With a big class, write a word on the board, for example,’Sun’.Get the students to come up with a word that they would associate with that word, for example, ’round’.Write that word beside the original word on the board.

Now get the students to come up with an association for the new word.

Continue the word association game until you have a good number of words on the board for the size of your class (for a class of 40 people, about 8 words will do).

Now get each student to quietly choose a word from the words on the board (they don’t have to write it down, just memorise it).

Confirm things by going through each word asking people to raise their hand if they have chosen that word. You need to do this because if there is a word that nobody has chosen then that word, when it comes time to recite the list, is replaced with a clap.

Erase all the words from the board and just leave a circle in the place of each one.Then prompt the students to recite the list from memory by pointing to the circles on the board and asking the students to say their chosen word when the time comes.The students are listening to what word comes before their word as a cue when to say their word. When they get to any unchosen words, the class claps in unison. Go forwards and backwards through the list at varying speeds.

Lastly, get all the students to say all of the words together.

Procedure 2

Everyone sits in a circle.

The first player, chosen randomly, says one word out loud.

The next player, in clockwise order, has to quickly say a word that has some connection with the previous word. What counts a connection is down to the parliament of players to determine: if somebody doesn’t like a connection, they can challenge it, and everyone votes on whether or not to allow it. In the event of a tie, the word is allowed.

A player is eliminated, or takes a forfeit, if any of the below happen: They take more than three seconds to make a connection. They repeat a word that has already been said in this game. They are challenged and loses the vote.

Eliminated players can still make challenges and cast votes. The last player standing is the winner.