Vocab!

So after reading Nation and Harmer I tried to incorporate vocabulary into my lesson plan today. I usually am pretty lazy when it comes to vocabulary so focusing on it was a little alien to me. The reading the vocabulary came from was quite long. Usually I would get the students to read the sentences out one line at a time as they go around, but after thinking about this approach in class a few weeks back I decided that having the students read themselves was a better idea. So we took it one paragraph at a time and told the students to underline a word if they did not understand it and thought it was important. I had already underlined ten words and pointed them out after each paragraph. The majority of students also picked the same words.
What I did next was to pre-make a question activity. I wrote 5 definitions with the correct answers relating to the vocabulary just covered on one piece of paper, and 5 on another. I then did PW where one student quizzed the other on the definitions and elicited answers from them without telling them the answer. By doing this the students began to get a feel for the new words themselves. As nation puts this, the "learning burden" of the word. They can give hints by using words that sound alike, by fitting it into a sentence, by spelling the first few letters, and I even had them use collocations as hints. They learnt about collocations in a previous class.
So I then asked the students if this exercise had been useful and they said yes...I think they would say yes anyway, but it's always good to hear.
I could have followed this up by a word activity, like a jumble or crossword in Harmer, or better still had the students use the new vocabulary in their own sentences. Time was not on my side however and I had to get through certain pages of the text to keep up with the syllabus. I guess this is when the students could do homework and show me their sentences in the next class. I am lazy like that also, it just adds to an already high marking workload for me. But if I had my students best interest at hand then that is what I should be doing I guess...no excuses.