Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Vocabulary


























We have a part of our daily schedule called Interactive Read Aloud. During this time I do a variety of activities. One of my favorite activities to do with my students is build their vocabulary. In grad school I read the book, Bringing Words to Life: Robust Vocabulary Instruction. It totally changed my approach to teaching vocabulary. I learned to create meaning activities (with kid-friendly definitions) which get students involved in thinking about words. My kiddos are highly engaged and really enjoy the activities. They often use the words later in speaking and writing.

For most of these activities students are sitting at the carpet with me. I am able to monitor students understanding in a variety of ways: thumbs up, thumbs down, sign language for true/false, whiteboards, etc. There is a multiple choice activity at the end that could be given paper/pencil, but generally I have them write their answers on whiteboards. The most paper/pencil I have had students do with the vocabulary words for the week is to illustrate them, as seen in one of the photos above.

Feel free to click here to download my first vocabulary activity for the book, Fancy Nancy, Bonjour Butterfly. Please try it with your students and leave feedback.

7 comments:

  1. Hi Tamara, I tried to download above and it would not let me, I will try back tonight. It look like we do a lot of the same things! I love your blog! I will try again tonight! Melissa from Joyful Teaching In Kc

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    1. Hi Melissa,
      I think I fixed the sharing problem with a simple click. See if you can get it now.
      :) Tamera

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  2. Tamera do you create all of your own lessons? Have you thought about selling them on TPT?

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    1. Thank you Jessica for your sweet comment.
      I do have a few on TPT for sale.
      I hope you got your free Fancy Nancy one.
      :)
      Tamera

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  3. I love it! Thanks for sharing! Quick question- do you do all of this in one sitting, or do different activities on different days to reinforce?

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  4. Hi Tamera!

    I was just wondering how/where you get your fonts for your vocab lists? I have seen some of those fonts before but never in color like yours. They look great!!!

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  5. Hi Tamera!
    I was just wondering where you get for book covers for your board? Do you print them from a particular website?

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