kallmakc hanelle elodey
Epicuro Kishore
As the school year comes to a close, I find myself on the struggle bus right alongside my students. While they are anxious for summer, I am anxious to keep them learning. In this article, I'm sharing 10 vocabulary activities that will engage students in word learning until the final school bell rings.
The easiest way to use the activities and games is simply as whole class instruction, and to perhaps pick one or two to complete a day. Alternatively, teachers can set up different activities and games at several different stations and keep students rotating to make time fly and word learning fast and effective! Regardless of which way works best, try to limit each activity to 15-20 minutes at the most in order to keep students engaged and working.
The easiest way to use the activities and games is simply as whole-class instruction, and to perhaps pick one or two to complete a day. Alternatively, teachers can set up different activities and games at several different stations and keep students rotating to make time fly and word learning fast and effective! Regardless of which way works best, try to limit each activity to 15-20 minutes at the most in order to keep students engaged and working.
With the Many Faces of Vocabulary Activity, students will piece together fun and interesting faces and then describe each feature using vocabulary words. This is especially fun at the end of the year when students are feeling a bit zany anyway to create motley faces for their amusement as well as their learning.
When temperatures start getting hotter outside, this activity will cool everyone down. With this delicious vocabulary activity, students will concoct and assemble delectable ice cream sundaes based on vocabulary words!
When you can ask your students to do nothing but bring in a coloring book, they will have no excuse not to complete the task. With such fun new coloring book designs, students can really get creative in terms of how they can label their coloring pages with vocabulary, as well as sneak in other concepts from the year. If having students bring in coloring pages is too much work, download the Color Your Vocabulary Activity!
A fun way to tell stories and use vocabulary words, Row Races can be used as a full class game or also station work. Row Races is a game that encourages students to use their vocabulary and creative writing skills.
I have had one student who just could not seem to retain the meaning of vocabulary words, no matter how hard we tried to create mnemonic devices or connect to their interests. She mentioned the Vocabulary Playlist assignment where I had students link each word to a specific song. She said that she really liked that activity and learned her words well that way.
For longtime blog readers, this game is the one that I cite most often, because it tends to be both my favorite and a favorite among students. What could be better than discussing with which item a vocabulary word matches best? There are several variations of this game, and each can be played in turn to keep reinforcing word learning.
One of my most recent favorites, telling students they are going to create a video game in class will get even the most effete students to raise an eyebrow. Lead with the bold graphics and fun design, and forget to remind them of how much they are learning while they complete the tasks.
But knowing I needed better vocabulary lessons was one thing. Figuring out how to teach meaningful vocabulary lessons was another. I struggled with how to teach it and when to squeeze it into an already packed schedule.
Early in my teaching, I would assign the five words from the weekly anthology story. I would tell them what they meant on Monday and then give them a multiple choice test on Friday. The kids passed the tests, but never truly learned the words. Also, the words from the basal rarely ever appeared in other literature that we were reading. It was terrible, but it was the only resource that the curriculum provided. I knew that if I was going to make vocabulary meaningful for my students I was going to have to start from scratch with my own words, lessons, activities and assessments.
So I did lots of research! I read blog posts and books about vocabulary and word acquisition. My very favorite resource is the book Word Nerds. I loved all of her ideas, but I needed to make the entire process simple and manageable in my busy classroom. After lots of brainstorming and trial and error, I finally have a vocabulary system that works, is easy to implement and that gets my students excited about word study.
It is not enough to just talk about the words on Monday. On Tuesday we spend another 10 minutes on our meaningful vocabulary. As a class, we come up with two synonyms and two antonyms (or non-examples) for each of our words. This process has really helped my students to expand their vocabulary and understand multiple meaning words. The examples and non-examples help to make the new vocabulary words more concrete for my students. I also like to throw in some unique or fancy antonyms and synonyms from time to time.
Tuesday is really all about talking about words and why they are or are not good examples. We have conversations about parts of speech and verb tenses. Students start to see that the best synonyms are the same part of speech and tense as the original word. Sometimes the kids will start debating a bit about which synonym or antonym we should choose to record. Since I have taught them to be respectful, these debates really just deepen their word understanding. It is magical!
Students have aha moments when they realize how affixes change the meaning of a word! We are still actively talking about vocabulary, but we are also hitting the reading and language standards associated with prefixes and suffixes.
On Thursday I give students time to draw a small and simple representation for each of their words. The drawings must somehow show the meaning of the word. For example, when the word was gallop- one of my students drew a horse running. When the word was clutch- one of my students drew a hand holding a purse.
At the end of our unit, during the 9th week, we review all 40 of the words from the unit. At the end of the 9th week, students take a summative assessment. I want to be certain that my students are retaining all of this information and not just learning it for the week. This same assessment can be used as a pretest at the beginning of the unit as well. It is challenging, but my students have been very successful!
I make two copies of the data chart for each student. One page is used for the entire unit! I keep a chart for myself and ask students to keep a chart as well. As I am grading the bi-weekly assessments, I highlight any word that a student misses. This only takes a few minutes. I pass back the assessment to the students and quickly go over the correct answers. Students will then circle any missed words on their chart. A student who misses a lot of words on a regular basis, will receive flash cards and extra practice. A student who misses a couple words here and there is asked to review the missed words throughout the week using their journal.
Students are generally missing more words at the start of the year and as we study words, I am noticing an improvement in our overall ability to learn new words. The chart helps students to see that they getting better! It can also be shown to parents during conferences.
Thanks for reading! I do not use words from a basal for two reasons: 1. These words rarely seem to appear in other literature that my kids read. 2. I do not use a basal because it is not engaging to my students. I use book clubs (or literature circles) instead. Since all of my groups are reading different books, it is not feasible to just choose words from their books. Instead, I did lots of research and choose tier 2 words that are commonly used in 3rd grade text. After testing it for 9 weeks, I can honestly tell you that our words have shown up over and over in class read aloud and book club books. My students get so excited when that happens!
Do you struggle to find time to teach writing? Do you find it a challenge to deliver lessons that help all of your writers? Would you like to learn a simple and effective way to teach writing? The Not So Wimpy Writing Masterclass is an online professional development course for grades 2-5. In this course, you will go from feeling overwhelmed to feeling confident and excited about teaching writing.
As March draws to a close, we extend our welcome to guest authors Michaela Sullivan and Lindsay Dougherty, who are back with another set of core vocabulary resources for teaching older students. Today, this dynamic team has a rich array of materials and suggestions to help them build fluency with the April core vocabulary words. They also discuss how to support AAC users during a popular classroom activity, shared reading.
We hope we can engage you with lessons centered around springtime and the many celebrations this month. Thank you for continuing to pursue new ways to support and motivate your students and adult learners to use core (& fringe) vocabulary. We hope you find ways to have fun and connect with each other while using our slides.
We hope that your learners enjoy the multitude of activities offered in the April Weeks 1-2 and Weeks 3-4 Google Slide Decks. Once you make copies of the Slide Decks, they can be easily modified and adapted to meet your individual student/learner needs, (or remain just as they are).
We suggest that you download the corresponding Symbol Charts containing April Level 1 and Level 2 words to help navigate and organize your lessons. They can also be used as hands-on low tech resources.
We have provided a variety of resources to give you a greater chance of finding activities to meet your diverse student(s) needs and interests. We hope that you and your students/adults enjoy these resources created in modifiable Google Slides.
Shared reading is an evidence-based instructional approach whereby others can help to guide the emergent reader to interact with a book by leading with a comment, asking a question, or responding to what the student may say; providing wait time in order to allow for processing and opportunities for interaction (Notari-Syverson, Maddox and Cole, 1999). In this approach, an individual may read with the learner, not to the learner. Shared reading can be conducted in 1:1 or in small or larger group dynamics.
c01484d022