How To: Use Lists, Opposites, Matching, and Sentences to Teach Vocabulary

Cloze Encounters of the Fun Kind

Fun fact: Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind was the last horror movie I ever watched—back in my mid-twenties. I couldn’t sleep for weeks. Every strange noise was definitely an alien about to abduct me. Luckily, we’re dealing with cloze encounters—and usually of the humorous variety. Cloze sentences are one of the many ways to reinforce vocabulary.

Thank you to Hermann Ebbinghaus for discovering the forgetting curve (AKA the memory curve) in 1885. Through self-experiments, he found that memory retention drops sharply soon after learning, then gradually levels off over time. This demonstrated that without review or reinforcement, we forget information quickly—often within hours or days.

However, he also found that spaced repetition can dramatically improve retention and flatten the curve. So, here we are, working with the same vocabulary terms throughout the unit, pulling back on scaffolding and encouraging flexible, deeper thinking about each word. According to Ebbinghaus, repeated exposure over time strengthens retention, especially when students actively retrieve and apply what they've learned in new ways. By shifting the format while revisiting familiar terms, we’re not only honoring the science of memory, we’re helping students take real ownership of their learning.

🖍 How the Routines Work

Cloze Sentences

I often keep the cloze sentences light and playful by including student names and infusing some humor. I can tell they appreciate it when they make an appearance in one of my nutty sentences.

Opposites

Depending upon the unit, I format working with antonyms in a few ways. Many prefixes lend themselves to working with opposites. I describe real-life situations in which students would need to know the meaning of key vocabulary or I simply try to make the situations relatable. Or I may give them a chart to complete with correct and incorrect definitions.

Directions on the worksheet are explicit, check out samples below!

These "down, out, away" prefixes lent themselves perfectly to consider opposites.

Another variation on working with opposites.

Lists

Generating lists related to vocabulary words is effective practice because it helps learners actively connect the new word to prior knowledge rather than simply memorizing a definition. Students generate associated words, ideas, examples, characteristics, or related concepts, which strengthens understanding and creates multiple mental connections. This deeper processing improves retention and recall because the word becomes part of a larger network of meaning. It also encourages students to think about relationships among words, build semantic knowledge, and develop a more flexible understanding of how the vocabulary word can be used in different contexts. Additionally, it promotes active engagement, which is generally more effective for learning than passive activities such as copying definitions.

Check out the Interactive Unit Guides to see how these lessons can fit into units.