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.

Contemporary Beginning of the Year Read Alouds

There is nothing wrong with the classics. There are books that I still use the first week of school, year after year. But I also want to make sure I am reading the newer books that are being published each year as well. Not only are publishers more cognizant of diversity in their characters, but it ensures my students are being given unique experiences. There's nothing like hearing "my teacher read us that book last year". 

So here are my recommendations:

Using Depth and Complexity with Chrysanthemum

I LOVE setting the stage for our daily read-alouds in the beginning of the year. There are so many amazing stories where students can compare their own experiences and hopefully to allay any anxieties about going back to school. I will never forget a Kinder student I once had. When they left after the first day I said "see you guys tomorrow!" and she groaned and burst into tears crying "what?! we have to come back tomorrow?". 

Kaplan's Depth and Complexity are concepts where we can dig more deeply into these stories and analyze these characters. I introduce them early on because we will use them daily throughout the year. Many of these activity ideas can be transferred to any back-to-school story.

  Big Idea-how do our names help shape our identity? What do you think 

                                          parents think about when they decide on a name? Would you name 

your child a unique name?

           Over time-What do you think Chrysanthemum would name her child when 

                                  she grows up-a unique name? How do you think Victoria will change

                                     over time-will she still be mean? 

\           Trends-I am fascinated by trends in names over time. How do

                                     cultural things like popular celebrities or tv shows influence names? 

                                    How do the common names change when you look at data from 

                                                                           other countries?

    Details- what would the story have been like if her name was Jane?

Creating Risk-Takers

I think I was in college when I had a very memorable conversation with my mother. I had been a tour guide and wanted to apply to be the Tour Guide Supervisor but was afraid I wouldn't get it. And she said "you have the biggest fear of failure I have ever seen in a person". My response, to her chagrin, was "who do you think made me that way?" :) Those words from her stung. I was too worried about what people would think to try things.

I also think a lot about an article I read that talked about how on playgrounds most parents encourage their boys to take risks and cajole their girls for doing the same. "Be careful", "that doesn't seem safe". I think about this as I plan lessons for my students. I want them to have the confidence to take risks. To fail and get back up but not being afraid to fail.

So how do we do this? I try to model it for my kids. I'm trying this new idea, we'll see if it works. Letting them know-I am presenting in a meeting today and I'm a little bit nervous but I'm going to do it anyway. This past year I had students be the teachers. For our warm-up in reading and math, they let the review. I saw a huge leap in confidence for the students who really embraced this.

Another way is to model it with stories. Here are my favorites:

Huge fan of Peter Reynolds, but this one is one of my favorites. Talks a lot about taking the risk of being yourself.

Fish wants Snail to come on adventures with it but Snail doesn't want to leave his place of comfort.

One of my favorite discoveries. Penguin has the soul of an eagle and wants to learn how to fly. It shows penguin trying, failing and not giving up. The last part is my favorite!

This book shows not only how to be brave and try but it also shows an amazing understanding dad who encourages without pushing.

Tree is supposed to lose his leaves but he doesn't want to take the risk to change. 

My favorite wordless book. Braving the ocean waves.

Beautiful story about kids using their imagination to fight boredom. Poetically written.

Ideas for End-of-Year Activities

I know this can be a stressful time between the kids excitement at school almost being over and all the lists of things that need to get done. But I enjoy being able to go off script a little bit. I do daily themes and allow students to apply skills they have learned throughout the year.

We did a Food Truck unit-we read several books about food trucks including 

We used language of the disciplines to talk about vocabulary a chef would use and then also talked about the job of marketing and how they would come up with a name for their truck and a concept. Then I broke the students into groups and they were to come up with what their food truck would be called, what it would look like and a menu. Then they presented their truck to the group.

Make a song/commercial for our school. Again they worked in groups to take a melody of their choice and change the lyrics to be about our school. They really got into this one clapping out the beats and looking for rhymes. After practicing they performed it for the class.

Art Theme-it is very important to me that we incorporate art into our daily plans. We learned about a lot of famous artists this year and the vocabulary that goes along with creating art. For this activity we thought like Mondrian and made a creation using his primary colors/shapes. Then we painted like Michelangelo and the Sistine Chapel.  Now rest assured, I did go over with them that the fact he painted the chapel ceiling on his back is actually a myth-but it is really hard to paint a ceiling. So we taped paper up under the tables-each artist had an assistant and using watercolors they attempted to create a masterpiece of their own.

Escape Room-we do a lot of escape rooms throughout the year. This one I made clues to identify which classmate stole the cookie from the cookie jar. "This students has a few friends, actually he has many, he drives his teacher crazy, always talking about Kenny" (this student is obsessed with South Park. They also had word searches, puzzles to put together to see which classmate as well as code breaking and addition to solve for the letters. It was the most fun escape room we did all year!

I will miss this amazing group of boogerbears! :)

Memories

This time of year is always bittersweet for me. Teachers every day are saying "it's almost over", "just a few more days". But it's hard for me to say goodbye to a group of students that have become a family over the past 10 months. I also find packing up a classroom very stressful-I wish we had more time to really go through things and organize.

We talk about memories. We read the book:

There is a video on Storyline Online where Bradley Whitford reads this story aloud.

They discuss what is a memory? I then ask the students to write the same. How can you define that word without using the word "memory" or remember.

We also read the book:

Students draw their own memory jars and write/draw things they will remember about their year in 1st grade. 

She is talking about the game Blooket. :)

Yes it breaks my heart that the lockdown is one of his memories. :(

Finally they write a letter to themselves. They write about what they think they will be like in 5th grade. I place these letters in a time capsule and distribute the letters to those who are still at our school in 4 more years. 

Only One You

One of our end-of-year activities is to read the book:

We watched several graduation speeches where people gave their advice. I asked the students to write about what their advice for someone going out into the world would be: