Back when I was a student, there is only one vocabulary activity I can ever remember doing in class or for homework. It was looking up the word in the dictionary, writing the definition, and using the word in a sentence. I can recall this assignment itself (probably because of the sheer number of times I had to do it), but ask me how many of those actual words I am able to remember. Couldn’t tell you a single one, to be honest!
Trying to find a meaningful vocabulary teaching approach? Find fresh, powerful, and inspiring ideas to revolutionize the way you teach words!
Are you required to teach a list of vocabulary words each week? This list of vocabulary activities will help teach students to read!
Weather Picture Quiz, ESL Vocabulary Test. Free weather exercise PDF for kids. Weather Vocabulary Words in English sunny windy rainy stormy snowy cloudy
Engaging vocabulary review Ideas & activities that can be used with K-5 students! Five fun & collaborative vocabulary instruction ideas.
Want to help the students in your French classroom use more vocabulary? Check out these French vocabulary sheets and ideas on how to use them!
As teachers we know that vocabulary is pivotal in students’ success. When I was growing up, our vocabulary activities consisted of looking up definitions in the dictionary and copying them down on notebook paper. Do you think I truly understood those vocabulary words? Not. One. Bit. In order to truly understand vocabulary words and what […]
Check out this free (editable!) printable vocabulary game for kids in elementary and middle school. Just type your words on the cards, and you have a fun vocabulary activity that you can use with any word list! #vocabulary
Long vocabulary lists can appear daunting and unlearnable at first glance, but they don’t have to be perceived in such a way. Here we have engaging and entertaining activities, games, and strategies to help your students master their vocab lists with ease. Learning is made fun with the right
Let's dive into some new options to teach vocabulary, for those who have the time and energy to pursue them. In this post and podcast, I'm sharing ten ideas for making the study of vocabulary something students might even look forward to.
This vocabulary template is perfect for your student's interactive notebook, or if you want them to write out the vocabulary to practice and learn the terms!
Planning your guided literacy time is bout to get so much easier. I get asked a lot about how to tie reading and writing together, while focusing on fluency, comprehension, phonics, vocabulary, writing, etc. I create this resource to get kids excited about reading and writing, and to make planning
Our guest blogger shares her tips about how to make time for vocabulary instruction and how to make vocabulary instruction engaging for your students!
Find 23 ready to use, effective vocabulary activities your students will love, by The Teacher Next Door!
I'm always looking for new vocabulary journal ideas. I like these printable templates because they're simple, and students in both elementary and middle school can use them. #vocabularyactivities #firstgrade #secondgrade #thirdgrade #fourthgrade #fifthgrade
Over the last few months I've discovered interactive notebooks and folding resources - and I've fallen hard for them! I love the ways you can combine folding, colouring, words and ideas to create an interactive resource which helps students to explore and engage with the topic they are learning.&
Engaging vocabulary review Ideas & activities that can be used with K-5 students! Five fun & collaborative vocabulary instruction ideas.
The start to the school year for newcomer ELLs can be overwhelming and nerve-wracking. It is our job to set them up with tools to help them feel comfortable exploring a new language in a
I started teaching French over 15 years ago, and during that first year, I could have really used some free French resources to help me out! Instead, every Sunday was spent prepping, creating, and cutting
Teachers like vocabulary strategies that make learning more meaningful and lasting. Check out these 15 Strategies to Ramp Up Vocabulary Instruction.
Use this simple graphic organizer to map out a new word and explore it in depth.
Looking for vocabulary center activities? Try this! Kids roll a die and do what it says. What a fun activity for teaching vocabulary or for early finishers! #vocabularyactivities #thirdgrade #fourthgrade #fifthgrade
I do teach sight words throughout the week, but on Thursdays we always have an extension activity for one of them.
Practice writing and vocabulary skills with this free printable synonyms and antonyms game.
Looking for a way to get students to have fun learning new words AND remember them longer? Try these brain-based vocabulary activities.
Every year I am shocked by my students' underdeveloped vocabulary. They struggle with reading comprehension because of their limited understanding of words. Their writing can be very drab because of their limited word choice. And when it comes time for standardized testing they often struggle with understanding what is being asked of them because of
Etymology, which is the study of the historical word orgins and their meanings, is a powerful tool for improving vocabulary.
Welcome (or welcome back) to another installment of my series on teaching vocabulary to gifted students. In previous posts, I wrote about steps to take before staring vocabulary instruction, including assessing what students already know using a quick and easy self-ratings scale. Next, I wrote about strategies for introducing new words and putting a gifted twist on vocabulary instruction. The whole reason I started researching best practices in vocabulary started when I realized a few things. One, I had gifted students to teach and it was obvious that the regular, run-of-the-mill vocabulary materials handed to me by the district would not be sufficient. Two, had the curriculum been challenging enough for my students, I found it dreadfully boring. If I found it boring, my students would have positively died. And I'm not into creating that kind of emergency in my classroom. And three, I knew the importance of vocabulary instruction and it's far-reaching effects, so it was something I felt I couldn't afford to get wrong. Thus began my own journey into deeper learning so that I could really make an impact in our classroom, while also injecting some FUN! This post goes into a little more depth on the components of quality vocabulary instruction, as well as some of the activities that I used with students to engage them in meaningful word learning and purposeful practice. Just as a quick reminder, a child's vocabulary is a huuuuuuge predictor of academic success in ALL areas. What the Research Says One of the best-known researchers in the field of vocabulary instruction is Robert Marzano. In his studies, he found six key steps were the key to better vocabulary instruction. The first three steps are done with the help of the teacher: Teachers should give students an example, description, and/or explanation of the new term. Students need to restate the explanation, description, or example using their own language. Students should construct a picture, pictograph, or symbolic representation of the term. (If you hop back to my previous blog post, you will find a free download of a graphic organizer on which students can engage in steps two and three). 4. Periodically, students should engage in activities that help them add to their knowledge of the terms in their vocabulary notebooks. 5. Students should be asked to discuss the terms with one another sometimes. 6. Students are periodically involved in playing games that enable them to play with terms. In studies conducted with classrooms using these strategies, it became clear that when teachers engaged their students in alllll of these six practices, students usually showed significant gains in vocabulary learning. Other well-known vocabulary researchers, Dr. Kate Kinsella and Dr. Kevin Feldman, point out three things that don't work in their article, Narrowing the Language Gap: The Case for Explicit Vocabulary Instruction: "looking up words in the dictionary, using written context to determine word meaning, unplanned, extemporaneous vocabulary teaching." Instead, teachers should focus on four important ideas: wide reading, direct teaching of important individual words, teaching word learning strategies, and fostering word conscientiousness through various activities that encourage language play, and choice in writing (Graves, 2000) and (Nagy and Scott, 2000). My General Flow of Vocabulary Instruction and Assessment Now that I've shown you some research, and told you a little about how I preassess and introduce the words, as well as how I accommodate gifted learners, I'm thinking you might be curious about how it all fit together for me. A typical vocabulary cycle flows like this for me: Pre-test students on new words by having students complete a self-ratings-scale prior to starting a new list Introduction of new words. If they already know any of the words well enough to define and use in a sentence, they don’t have to study those words. You can find more about how I pre-assess for vocabulary in this blog post. Students add their words to our “Map It Out” cards. We discuss the definitions of the vocabulary words together. Students continue to work on these throughout the entire cycle, starting with the synonyms and antonyms (you can even do this part together) and reserving the sentence writing portion until near the end. The “Map It Out” cards are great for students to keep with them when they are working on the other learning activities throughout the cycle, too! They can always go back to the cards and add to or revise them as they learn more about their words. You can read more about introducing the words and find a free download of the Map It Out cards here. Students add their words to a catalog or make word wall cards for each root or affix. The “Map It Out” cards themselves are sized to fit on a 5 x 7 notecard or in a composition notebook. I like students to keep a record of all of their words for the year to use for reference and as evidence of all the learning they’ve accomplished! Students choose one to three (or more) learning activities (like the ones outlined below) to complete. *The number of activities chosen should be a reflection of how much time students have and the number of activities you think each student needs. Gifted students may require much less repetition than “typical” peers or students with other learning differences so the activities that go more in-depth may be a better fit for them!* Use a quick-check strategy every couple of days to measure progress on learning. I do not use this as a graded quiz. It is meant to be a low-stakes, low-risk tool that students can use to quiz themselves as they are progressing toward mastery. This is a research-based strategy that has been shown to increase retention. Assess student learning following the completion of the activities. This cycle is flexible, but I found it generally took about 7 school days to get everything accomplished. Yours might take more or less time, depending on how much class time you can dedicate to it, and of course, on your students' needs. How I Encouraged Word Play in My Classroom While I definitely engaged students in the super important pre-assessment and direct instruction activities, my FAVORITE part of the vocabulary learning process was definitely allowing students to engage in different activities that helped students achieve deep learning and understanding of their words. This was definitely the part my students enjoyed the most, too. I'll outline a few of my favorite activities here, and maybe even provide a *free* download for you at the end. "WordTube" This activity is a play on the popular YouTube website. Students write each assigned vocabulary word and draw a picture of it on a “WordTube” screen. Then they use the “Up Next” boxes to write the part of speech, identify the roots/affixes contained in the word or the origin if the word does not appear to have Greek or Latin roots or any affixes, and define the word. Students should paraphrase the definition, as this strategy requires more critical thinking and will ultimately help them remember the meaning of the words better. Word Analogies Students create their own analogies for vocabulary words. Creating and using analogies when learning new material is a research-based strategy that requires students to have a deeper understanding of vocabulary words, activates prior knowledge, and helps students bridge the gap between their schema and new learning. There are two ways students can use this strategy-- students can create their own analogies for vocabulary words and complete the entire analogy. Or, students can create partial analogies that they can trade with a partner to solve. For this option, they must also make up an answer key (I suggest they create the answer key first). You'll want to be sure to teach children the different kinds of relationships you can create with analogies--for example, analogies can show part to whole relationships, the can reflect synonyms, antonyms, time sequences, increasing or decreasing intensity, etc. Shades of Meaning For this activity, students generate semantic gradients for their vocabulary words. This requires them to think of or find words that are semantically similar to their vocabulary words and then to arrange the words in order. This activity helps students make meaningful connections between words they already know and their new term. There are, again, two variations of this activity that are fun and useful. For one variation, students would either think of, find (or be provided with) a list of synonyms that align with the original vocabulary word. They would then arrange the terms in order from the strongest expression of the term to words that express the term to a lesser degree. For the second variation of the activity, students think of or look up 5 synonyms and 5 antonyms for the vocabulary word. They place the vocabulary term in the center of the continuum and then arrange the synonyms and antonyms so that they get stronger as they move away from the center. When students are finished, they should discuss with someone why they chose to put their words in order. They could write their rationale instead if no-one is available to discuss. I like to allow students access to both options because some terms don’t really have opposites. Further, I always allow some flexibility with the number of synonyms and antonyms students have to find, as some words—particularly words from content area studies—don’t have many synonyms or antonyms. Also, since these are fairly subjective and there is lots of “grey” area in terms of how the words are arranged, grading these should either be avoided, aside from completion, or rely heavily on the child’s explanations. I highly suggest this activity be completed with pairs or small groups of children to encourage the rich conversations that can occur as they are determining the order in which to place the words. Making Connections Making connections between words really encourages students to think deeply about the meaning of words, and how they relate to other words. This activity is well-suited for small groups of students, as well as the entire class at once if you’re all studying the same words at the same time. Students are each assigned one or two unique words, and then they spend time interacting with others in an effort to find a word that they feel connects with their words. Eventually, students settle on a connection or match. Then, students explain either in writing, to the class, or just to the rest of their group members how their terms are connected. You will want to spend some time with your students discussing the difference between surface-level and deeper connections. For example, students need to look past words having the same number of letters, starting or ending with the same letters or sounds, being in the same chapter in their science book, etc. The activity (and related research) suggest that making deeper connections between words and concepts are really what will help cement the vocabulary into children’s learning, creating long-lasting, authentic learning experiences. Interview a Word This activity is great for helping deepen students’ understanding of words and their possible connotations. One student “becomes” one of the words, and the other student is the interviewer. It is fun to encourage the “words” to show their personality and act as though they were truly embodying their word. My students really enjoy acting things out like this! I suggest doing this activity in pairs or small groups, however, if a child is working independently, he or she can just write down the answers to the interview questions on paper instead of posing the questions for someone else to answer. For this activity, you may find it useful to allow students access to websites such as visualthesaurus.com and www.etymonline.com so they can research some possible answers to the interview questions. As a fun aside, having students make and wear nametags for this activity is a fun way to boost engagement! Create a Menu Students get full creative license over designing a menu for a new restaurant and using their vocabulary words in the descriptions. Students start by deciding on a theme and name for the restaurant. Then they decide the names of dishes to include on the menu, all fitting in with the designated theme. Next, students use all of their vocabulary words to create a restaurant menu. In my opinion, it is not necessary that each menu item use a vocabulary word, as long as they have managed to include all of their words on the menu somehow, using them properly in context. Creating a themed restaurant and sticking to only including dishes that fit the theme definitely requires higher level thinking skills. If you find this to be too challenging for some of your students, you could allow them to include dishes on the menu that do not fit into a particular theme, as long as they are still using their vocabulary words to write the descriptions. If you want to take this to the next level, you could do something like have students design and create an actual (miniature) restaurant storefront, or allow students time to visit each other’s restaurants and “order” something off of the menu. Sound like fun? There are SO many other great ideas for helping your students engage independently with their vocabulary word study. I put three of the above ideas together for you in a free exclusive download if you're ready to give them a try. This freebie is available ONLY to my subscribers and can be found among many other free resources in my free resource library. Click the image below to gain access to your free copy! *Just to be clear, by clicking to get these freebies (and instant access to the growing collection of free resources in my library of subscriber exclusives), you're also agreeing to be added to my email list, where I'll send occasional messages with fresh ideas, tips, and other resources straight to your inbox. You can unsubscribe at any time.* If you're ready to save TONS of time, you can find these three activities and many more in my store by clicking on the images below. So far, I have FIVE separate volumes of nine activities created and ready to download and print. Each volume includes a table of contents and full-page student-friendly directions for each of the activities. They also include a choice menu for each volume, which allows students to make choices about which activities they work on to learn their vocabulary words each week. It is also a good tool to track completion of menu options depending on how long or how many options you allow students to complete. All three volumes also include a rubric, the "Map It Out" graphic organizer and nine vocabulary activities that can be used with any of your own vocabulary lists. Each volume of my Word Study Activities also has one or two FREE bonuses, from a formative assessment tool to a student activity proposal form to a pre-assessment and self-ratings scale. I also bundled these activities together for big savings. You'll get all five volumes (45 activities!) and the corresponding bonus resources for the price of four volumes! If students complete one different activity a week, there are enough activities in the pack to last the entire year (or longer)! You can access the bundle by clicking the picture below. Let me know if you have any questions! I love hearing from my readers!
“Hey kids, it’s time to practice our new vocabulary words.” Can you hear the moans and groans?Practicing vocabulary is boring (according to kids) but when you add in dice, it becomes a game! I call it Roll a Word! It’s easy peasy to implement! For each vocabulary students roll a die. The number they […]
Every year I am shocked by my students' underdeveloped vocabulary. They struggle with reading comprehension because of their limited understanding of words. Their writing can be very drab because of their limited word choice. And when it comes time for standardized testing they often struggle with understanding what is being asked of them because of
Looking for a way to get students to have fun learning new words AND remember them longer? Try these brain-based vocabulary activities.
Need to help your students get more hands on practice for their vocabulary words? I've got 5 fun vocabulary games you can use right away!
There can't be too many games to practice irregular verbs, right? Use the cards and play with irregular verbs in 10 engaging ways! Print in full color or B&W and start using in your classroom. Wait! Before purchasing, check out the bundle! [https://crazycharizma.com/language-arts-centers/] BUY NOW If you are more comfortable with purchasing on TPT, click the button below. BUY ON TPT [https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Irregular-Past-Tense-Verbs-Games-for-Daily-Grammar-Practice-48413
While I am a firm believer in students reading real books that they choose and doing this often, I also love to include reading games and reading centers in
A three-step process for teaching your students how to identify,
Hey Ya'll! Do your kids love to learn by playing games? What if I told you that you could increase your students vocabulary by playing games that take 20 minutes or less? Vocabulary is something that is highly stressed in my district. It seems like each year, more and more pressure is put on us to increase students vocabulary. Today I'm here to share with you 4 easy games that you can implement into your class to increase vocabulary and make learning fun AND engaging! Kids should get excited about learning. Implementing games into our daily routine helps increase their learning when they don't even know it. All of these activities that I'm about to share can be used in a whole or small group setting. First up is Heads Down, Vocab Up! This is a game I like to have my kids play when I have a few minutes to kill before moving onto the next subject or when their little brains just need a break. It's super simple. Does your class like to play "heads down, thumbs up" or some call it "heads up, 7 up"? Mine do! Heads Down, Vocab Up! is just like that only using word cards. You can use any type of vocabulary cards you'd like. We play using sight words, compound words, contractions, academic vocabulary and more. Here is how to play: Pick 3-4 students to be it. Give each student picked a vocabulary card. Turn off the lights and the rest of the class puts their head down (NO PEEKING!) and their thumb up. The students chosen go around the room and pick someone by touching their thumb. When the teacher turns the lights on, those picked stand up and try to guess who picked them. Rather than calling out the students name, they must call out the vocabulary word that student is holding. If they get it right, they get to trade places and be it. If they get it wrong, they sit back down. Then the next round begins. You can also have your students tell the meaning of the word, use it in a sentence or give a synonym. This way it can be easily differentiated for various learners. When using academic vocabulary cards, I like have them say the word and their own meaning of the word. This is a simple review that can be done in 5 minutes or stretched out into a whole group lesson. Up next is a little game I like to call Word Speed! Word Speed is quick game that we play daily throughout the week. I do this with vocabulary and grammar skills mostly. All you need is some chart paper and makers. You could easily laminate chart paper and use dry erase markers to make it reusable. What you'll see below is bulletin paper from our workroom. Here is how you play... 1. Split your class up into 2 teams. (You can do more if you'd like) 2. Tape a piece of chart paper on opposite sides of the room for each team. You want them far enough apart where the other team can't see the others paper. 3. Write the topic you are covering at the top of the chart paper. 4. Time them for 1-2 minutes (sometimes this will be longer such as 3-4 minutes until everyone has a turn, but they think they only have one minute). 5. Each person write a vocabulary word and passes the marker to the next person. They are not allowed to talk while doing this. (The picture above, they had to write a pair of synonyms. They cannot write something that has already been written.) 6. They have 1-2 minutes to write as many words as they can. 7. When the time is up, the person holding the marker brings it to you. 8. I give each team one point for having the correct words. They race every day. On Monday-Wednesday, I do not count off for spelling. On Thursday and Friday, if a word is misspelled, I do not count it. This helps with preventing tie-breakers. 9. At the end of the week, the team with most points is the Word Speed Champ for the week! We play with a new piece of paper everyday so that they are able to use the same words. On Tuesday, I use the back of the page that they wrote on, on Monday. I kept a tally of the points on the board. I found that they loved this game so much, that they would go home and ask their families for words to use. Once the kids got into the routine of playing for various concepts, they would always ask if it was Word Speed time! Now lets talk about a class favorite that I use for multiple concepts. This little game is a BIG DEAL! It's called KABOOM! I blogged about this concept awhile back. You can read about it here. I'll do a quick recap. All you need to create KABOOM is popsicle sticks, a permanent marker, and a cup. Here's how to play: Color one tip of each popsicle stick. This end sticks out of the cup. Write a vocabulary word on each stick. You also need 5-10 KABOOM sticks. (For my academic vocabulary sets, I put 2 sets of vocabulary words that are 8 words each, and then 5 Kaboom! sticks. For sight words, I do a full set and then 10 KABOOM sticks. Place all the sticks in a cup with the colored tip sticking up. Students play rock, paper, scissors to see who goes first. The first player draws a stick and reads the word. For academic vocabulary they must read the word correctly and tell the meaning or use it in a sentence. This is good for differentiation in your groups. If the student reads the word and uses it in correctly they get to keep their stick. If they read it incorrectly or use it incorrectly, the stick must go back in the cup. If they draw a stick that says KABOOM! They have to put all of their sticks back into the cup. This is a BIG DEAL ya'll! The player with the most sticks at the end of the game wins! I like to play KABOOM with academic vocabulary at the beginning of each small group. I can easily differentiate each question I ask based on each student to fit their needs. We also play whole group using sight words, parts of speech, and for various math concepts. This is a favorite during stations as well. I keep all of my games set up in baskets and the kids can easily grab a cup when they have time. All the other games I have created are stored and labeled in ziploc bags. Last but most certainly not least is my personal favorite, Beach Ball Vocabulary! I originally started playing this game with math facts and learned that I could use it for all different subjects. You can read my math fact post here. All you need is a beach ball and a maker. Write vocabulary words all over the ball in a random order. Here is how to play: Have students form a large circle around the room while you or another student stands in the middle. GENTLY toss the beach ball to a student. Whatever word their thumb (you can pick right or left) lands on, they must tell the definition, use it in a sentence, or give an example of. Then they GENTLY toss the ball back to you and you throw it to another student. The example shown above was played with antonyms. Students had to say the antonym of the word one of their thumbs landed on. For academic vocabulary, I have all of unit 1 words written on a ball, all of unit 2 words written on a ball, etc. This way they are getting review of words we have already learned. All of the games show above can be used with multiple concepts such as academic vocabulary, synonyms/antonyms, prefixes/suffixes, compound words, contractions, parts of speech, sight words and so much more. Use them cross-curricular for math concepts or science and social studies. I hope you can incorporate at least one of these activities into your classroom! My kids love them and I hope yours do too! Have a great day!
