I like to pre-teach vocabulary at the beginning of a lesson. I often do this with visuals. There are so many images available on the web - you can do a google search for images here: http://images.google.com

There are also image sets available here for clothing vocab, food and classroom items: www.delvelearning.com.

I agree that games are a great way to do this. One of my favorite games for teaching vocabulary is concentration. To play this, students have a set of picture cards and corresponding word cards. Students must turn the cards face down and take turns turning two of them over, concentrating on the location of cards. When a match is found, students leave cards face up. The object of the game is to have all cards face up.

It's a very simple game that students love.

good luck!
Juli
www.delvelearning.com