This week my students were engaged in a vocabulary game modified from the book Word Nerds. In chapter 6 of Word Nerds they discuss a game to play called Block Party" where the students mingle with their related words. Well my class and I decided to rename it "A Vocabulary Family Reunion" because what do you do at a family reunion, but meet or reunite with current or new family members.

Each day my class helper passes out the lanyards and students write a sentence with their word. Today they wrote a sentence with their word, but were also asked to use a conjunction in their sentence since we are learning about conjunctions this week. Then each family of related words were asked to meet in a particular area of the room. After much modeling each day of expected behavior and what they were expected to do once with their families, they did great. Each person greeted a family member by shaking a family member's hand and saying, " Hi, Nice to meet you ____________. I am ________ and I am a (synonym/antonym) of your word," we did this on Monday. On Tuesday, they greeted each other the same, but shared their sentence with their family members. Today, they did both showed how they were related and shared a sentence.

At the beginning of the week, they started off not wanting to shake each other's hands, but by today they were making up their own handshakes and asking me when they were going to meet with their family.

I'm looking forward to teaching another set of vocabulary words next week!

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Mrs. Shepherd

     Chapter 6 of Word Nerds is "Celebrate to Validate". As I left off on my last post on how I would bump  up my vocabulary instruction in my classroom here, I didn't mention what my plan was going to be on Day 5.

Little did I know that Chapter 6 was all about the last day. It is a day to "Celebrate to Validate". Chapter 6 gives you a plethora of ways to host a vocabulary party in your classroom to review those words studied for the week and recognize all of the students hard work.

My favorite party mentioned is "Celebrating Velcro Words." Velcro Words are words that will stick to your brain. According to the text, "The teacher calls on a student to share their favorite word and explain why they think it's a Velcro word. The teacher may then ask, When can you use the word _______? The student will then give their answer and the teacher will scan the room looking for approval or use the thumbs up/down signal. Finally the teacher will say, "(Student name) , we appreciate the word ______ and celebrate its use. Hear, hear!" The students will raise their cups and intone say, "Hear, hear! Then they each take a sip of juice. "(Chapter 6).

A game not mentioned in Chapter 6, but a game that has been a favorite of my class is Kahoot.  Kahoot would make for a fantastic game to play on a Friday before their test. Kahoot gets students engaged, using technology, and gets them collaborating and discussing those words one last time for the week. I would create the game as a cloze structure with students choosing the correct word to fill in sentences.

I would love to hear how you review before the test whether it's vocabulary or another subject?

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Mrs. Shepherd

     Reflecting back at this past school year, vocabulary instruction is definitely a skill I would  like to bump up in my classroom. Our admin asked us at the beginning of last school year to focus on teaching Tier II words, such as paraphrase, develop, describe, explain, compare, and contrast. So, each week and sometimes for more than one I focused on one of these words, sometimes two. This helped my students gain a lot of confidence with test taking! They were no longer scared of short answer questions because now they knew what the question was really asking them to do. On the other hand, I think I need to put more emphasis on Tier III words as well to build my students' vocabularies. In Social Studies we constantly discuss content/Tier III words and I use them regularly in my speech for the week and revert back to them in future lessons, and most students were successful on end of the week tests, but at the end of the year I still felt I could've done more even in Reading, but what?

So blog hopping this past week, I happened upon a few teachers who are doing a book study using Word Nerds: Teaching All Students to Learn and Love Vocabulary by Brenda J. Overturf, Leslie J. Montgomery, and Margot Holmes Smith. After reading some of their posts on their reflections of each chapter, I was hooked. This is exactly what my students need! So, obviously I purchased the book right away for my Kindle. It is definitely a book you can't put down. There are so many great ideas and actual classroom scenarios given that you get a real insight into how it may work in your classroom. I've already searched for lanyards for my students on Oriental Trading, but I'll get to that in a bit. The teachers doing the book study are already on Chapter 5, so I had lots of catching up to do and I am now caught up.

Here's what I have learned from Chapter 3 of Word Nerds and decided to implement into the beginning of my Reading instruction.

• On Day, 1 I will introduce 3-5 words, I really haven't decided yet if I will break it up. These words will consist of one Tier II word and the rest Tier III words. I will introduce the word, students will repeat, I will say again breaking the word into syllables, the students will repeat. I will use my popsicle sticks to have a students predict the definition. We will discuss the word and break it into parts they may know (prefixes/suffixes) if applicable. I will definitely scaffold if needed if they get stuck with determining the definition. I want to make them feel as successful as possible. Then I will present sentences on the board where I will model with students trying out each word in each sentence to find the correct fit. (We may even sing the P-O-E! Oh!Oh! chant) and then students will copy the word, definition, and come up with a 7-up sentence in their journal using the Frayer Model.

• On Day 2, we will discuss or use thesauruses to look up synonyms and antonyms for the words. Students will copy synonyms and antonyms into their Frayer Model in their notebooks and I will allow my student Teacher assistant for the week to fill in the class anchor chart. I love the idea of students filling in the Anchor Chart and not the teacher. Finally we will play a game with our words. My favorite games from Chapter 5 are Word Charades and Counting Dudes, Bragging Dudes. 

• On Day 3, we will continue reviewing words in context and if time permits play another game.

• Finally, on Day 4 we will review the words again with a cloze sentence structure similar but different than day one. Thinking of using this one as a participation grade.  

Keep in mind I have only read up to chapter 5, so I may come back and rework this plan before the beginning of the school year. So excited to keep reading and learning from Word Nerds! Stay tuned!

Check out the following teacher bloggers' links to read their thoughts on Word Nerds:

The Elementary Journey

Life in Fifth Grade

The Caffeinated Teacher

I'd love your comments!

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Mrs. Shepherd