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.