Ways to Incorporate Vocabulary

We all know vocabulary is important. It is especially important for me to explicitly incorporate these activities because many of them English Language Learners.

One of the ways I focus on vocabulary is using Language of the Disciplines from Kaplan's Depth and Complexity. We learn about the way different people in different careers look at the world. For example, an artist looking at the moon will see shadow, texture, hues. A scientist looking at the moon sees atmosphere, craters, gravity. For teacher appreciation week or Mother's Day the students learn about words that architects use-blueprint, area, arch, etc. Then they design a house for their teacher or their mom.

One of my favorite parent presentations is to do a Vocabulary Runway Show. The students are assigned a word and they come dressed as that word. They stand up and say the definition and an example. The best part is that the student is not just learning their word, but all the words in the class.

Powerful Words-we discuss what makes words powerful. We watch speeches like MLK's I Have A Dream speech or clips from graduation speeches. The students then make a mobile of what they consider to be powerful words. They use words like love, wonder, homeless. One of my students asked me if he could use the word hate-that is a pretty powerful word.

Vocabulary Block Party-each child is assigned a word and we go over the meaning together. We have a class "block party" where the students mingle, introducing themselves to their classmates as their word. "Hi, I'm wealthy, I mean very rich." "Really, I'm poverty which is when people are poor". 

We have vocabulary journals-some of their pages are Frayer Models. I love using this graphic organizer because not only are they thinking of examples-they are thinking of non-examples as well. If you can define what a word is not, then you understand that word.