Student success is more than just earning high grades - it’s about fostering a love for learning, encouraging perseverance, and celebrating every step forward.
With gamification and competition, the Vocabulary Bowl makes it easy to keep students engaged throughout the school year. There are many ways teachers across the world are bringing the competition to life at their schools.
We’re sharing our favorite tips and tricks to motivate students, build a culture of word learning, and help your school climb the Vocabulary Bowl leaderboards.
Set SMART goals
The Vocabulary Bowl is a great way to teach students how to set SMART goals. Before the Bowl starts, work with students to set individual and class goals.
Don’t be afraid to aim high but keep it reachable! When students are consistently completing Practice activities and VocabTrainer rounds, mastering 10 words per week is a great starting goal. Print out this goal tracker for each student to track their progress and challenge students to increase their goals throughout the season.
Put this class progress tracker up in your classroom. Spend some time daily or weekly to announce where your students are in reaching their goals. This will help students practice goal-setting and encourage them to see how their effort directly contributes to their school’s points.
Offer extra motivation
Incorporate word mastery and Vocabulary.com assignments into grading. By including word mastery as part of participation grades or extra credit opportunities, students are incentivized to reaching certain milestones of word mastery.
With seasonal and thematic lists for everything from sports to holidays, our Just for Fun curated vocabulary lists are a great way to engage students in extra word learning. Starting with these lists can help students build confidence as they start to rack up points by mastering these words. Use these customizable coupons to reward students as they master words!
Showcase the leaderboards
Displaying the live Vocabulary Bowl leaderboards in your classroom can be a powerful motivator when students see their school or class climb the leaderboards. As students master words, their school lights up on our mastery map and their points appear in real time. Make it a habit to review the leaderboards, celebrate progress, and set weekly goals!
Celebrate word mastery
Celebrate every point earned with an achievement wall where students can add a post-it highlighting every word they’ve mastered . For every 10-20 words mastered, reward them with a shout-out in class, a certificate of achievement, or a simple “well done”. Acknowledging their hard work goes a long way.
Make it a party
Learning Tree Elementary School, a recent runner-up, held lunch and after-school word learning rallies for students to work on VocabTrainer as they ate and socialized with peers. On the last day of the Vocabulary Bowl, they hosted an in-school pizza party for students who wanted to earn last-minute points.
Fun teacher participation
Students love seeing their teachers get involved and a chance to see their teacher be silly is a great motivator! Participate in dress-up days or set a challenge where students can earn the chance to silly string you if they reach their goal. When students see that you’re invested in their success, they’ll be more motivated to put in the effort. Larry Lexicon on Instagram and TikTok has tons of great ideas for motivational classroom fun!
Donate to student success
Recognize student achievement with bigger prizes! In past seasons, teachers at Arp High School asked parents, teachers, and local businesses for prize donations, ranging from snacks to Chromebooks and posted it on their Instagram account. Students received one raffle ticket for every 25 words mastered and the school held several raffles throughout the Vocabulary Bowl season.
Share the wins
Share your success with parents and administrators using the leaderboards. Highlight your class and schoolwide academic achievements in this global competition to demonstrate the effectiveness of your teaching strategies. Announcing your leaderboard ranking and any wins are great content for newsletters, social media posts, district publications, and anywhere your community celebrates its students.
Recent champions Sig Rogich Middle School were interviewed on a local news broadcast to show off their recent win. Other winning schools like Morehead City Middle School have also been featured in news articles. We’d love to see your school show off its academic achievements (and awards) too!Check out our Vocabulary Bowl page for more information!