Ideas for Vocabulary

As a teacher of young children, one of the most important things I think we can teach our kiddos is vocabulary. Multiple studies have shown that kids growing up in economically disadvanted areas simply do not have the same access to vocabulary growing up. We need to give our students academic vocabulary in a diverse myriad of experiences but also implicitly teach them new words. Speak to them as you would to adults, encourage them to ask when they don't know what a word means. 

So how do we do this?

Every read aloud, I pre-read and make notes of vocabulary my students may not know. I teach those words first before I read the story. Not many, just 2 or 3. Then I reinforce those meanings when I get to those words in the text. 

We have vocabulary journals where we fill in Frayer Models and answer questions about words. Is it a good thing to be "unique"? When was one time you felt "timid"? 

Vocabulary Runway shows-I assign students a word to dress up as-this is a great alternative to dressing up at Halloween. They do a little speech giving the meaning of their words and using it in a sentence.

Putting words in order of severity: irate, irritated, angry, livid-put them in order from least serious to most serious. You can do this for almost any feelings words. 

I discovered this site recently:

NY Times Connections  -you are finding the connections between sets of words. There are 2 that are fairly more obvious and then 2 that get more rigorous.

And lastly, my word walls are interactive. I put the words with a picture so they can find a word , take it down and use it in their writing.

Vocabulary is such an important skills-teaching it implicitly and by osmosis.