You can help students understand the meaning of words by providing additional contextual clues in your sentences. For instance, you may want your students to define the word "proficient" from the following sentence, "English is my favorite class because I am proficient with the subject." The contextual clues include the word "favorite," which tells the reader that the subject enjoys the class, and the word "because," which tells the reader that the word in question is a reason to like the subject. You can add clues to the sentence, such as "English is my favorite class because I am proficient at spelling, vocabulary and I love to read." In this sentence, the phrase "spelling, vocabulary and I love to read" refers to specific skills for which the subject has talent.
As a teacher, you can use non-verbal communications to help your students. Non-verbal communications are gestures, voice changes or facial expressions that convey additional meaning to the sentence. As an example, the sentence "I loathe the taste of broccoli" provides no verbal contextual clues about the definition of the word "loathe." If you make a disgusted gesture with your face, or extend your arms like you are pushing your plate away from you, while you speak the sentence, you are providing a non-verbal contextual clue for your students, and introducing them to non-verbal communication.
You can provide a long practice paragraph for your students, and include a series of blank spaces for your students to fill in with words that are appropriate for the contextual clues. For instance, you can provide the following sentence, "I hope dinner is ready soon, as I'm feeling ___." You can provide a group of words for your students to choose from, such as bored, sensitive and ravenous. Send your students home with a series of fill in the blank sentences every weekend, to familiarize them with their upcoming vocabulary words.
Instead of fill in the blank sentences, you can use nonsense words to accomplish the same task, while providing a fun atmosphere to your vocabulary work. Make up a few words, using random letters or fictional words, for your sentences. As an example, you can turn your sentence into "I hope dinner is ready soon, as I'm feeling quizzley." Ask your students to define the nonsense word, identify the contextual clues that lead them to that definition and then to provide a word from your vocabulary with the same definition.