Words, Words, Words. *Freebie!

Um, I do have something to confess.


Yesterday I lost the cookie dough battle. To quote Kristen, TOM is upon us, and I'm not WonderWoman. I did my best, but it was sugar cookie dough. And that stuff's aggressive. Every time I opened the freezer, it opened the lid to the tub and spooned out a delightful little bite. Then it shoved itself in my face and said, "MMMM That stuff's good!"Jerk cookie dough.
The other day my teaching buddy and I met to talk about vocabulary. After wandering around the school searching for a pace to work, we settled on the library. Of course, 'work' consisted of looking at each other, saying, "What are we gonna do? What are we gonna talk about? Math? Reading? Writing?"
She said she was most worried about writing.I said I was most worried about everything else.Remember, we know our kids because we're looping. So we're pretty much terrified.So we kind of wandered for a while. But we finally ended up talking about vocabulary. Our kids have a real issue with lack of vocabulary. It's kind of surprising the words they don't know, not only in their reading, but in their listening as well. Part of that is that many of them are learning English as a second language, or come from homes in which their parents speak a language other than English, but part of it is just limited exposure to words: conversations, TV shows that use a large vocabulary, playing games, and gong places that expose them to new ideas and words are not experiences that a lot of our kids have. The ones who do tend to be the better connected students; the ones that have better literacy skills. Limited vocabulary begets struggling readers begets less reading begets limited vocabulary.
So we talked about what we would do to work with this next year. We want to directly teach words, as well as a process for working with new words, so students will be exposed to new vocabulary and also develop strategies for identifying the meanings of new words as they uncover them in their reading.
These are some of the things we want kids involved in on a regular basis:
Word Games Online:BBC Prefixes & Suffixes GameCrickweb Vocabulary GamesFunBrain Word Games
Vocabulators: 

I saw them on Pinterest - they're Vocabulators from Fourth Grade Frolics

Check out her post to see how to make them and what she uses them for!

I think I want to try making these out of Crystal Light plastic containers to make mini ones. Do you think that would work?

I want to make containers with words grouped for a specific reason, like root words, or prefixes. Then the kids would have to look up the meanings of the words they found to figure out wht they all have in common. For example, if the words

astronaut

astronomoy

asteroid

asterisk

were in one vocabulator together, the kids would look up the meanings and find the similarity. Astro = star.

Word Webs:Students often have problems understanding how words are related in a text. For example, when reading a text about amphibians, related words could include species, frogs, vertebtrate, herpetology, and membranes. However, these words are all related in different ways. Some are examples, some are characteristics. You could even include reptile as a nonexample. I want kids to be able to read a text and identify the relationships between the words as a way to build words. So, a word web with a topic in the center, and bubbles like, "characteristics," "examples," "nonexamples," "purposes," etc., would be great for organizing these kinds of discussions about words.
Modifying base words:I want the kids to recognize words that belong to the same family and be able to use that to read and understand new words in their reading. To do this, we want them to manipulate base words by adding prefixes and suffixes. For example, the words doubt, undoubtable, doubted, and doubting all have the same base word. That understanding can help students think about the meanings of words that can look very foreign.Word Study Freebie

You can grab this free word study web to use when modifying base words (or building words out of prefixes or suffixes, as well) at TPT.

These are some of the things we talked about. What kinds of things do you find especially helpful in developing students' listening and reading vocabulary?
Also, check out my supercute new product at TPT and Teacher's Notebook.My lovely previously mentioned teaching buddy has a shark/ocean/beachy theme for her classroom. So I made this ocean and beach themed set of classroom materials! I'm very pleased with how cute it is. Almost cute enough to change my theme- but not quite. Still heart bees.

This pack includes 60 pages of materials for your Ocean-themed classroom!

*Good Readers Poster Pack (5 posters)

*Literacy Centers Poster Pack & Cards for Chart Tablet (10posters & cards)

*Word Wall Letters

*Calendar Set: Numbers, Months, and Blank Student Calendar

*Birthday Card

*Binder Cover Sheets: Substitute, Lesson Plans, Common Core, Guided Reading, Assessments, Planning Binder

*Bulletin Board Signs for Subjects & Student Work

*Behavior Signs

*Supply Labels for Materials

*Basket Labels for Student Notebooks

*Student Desk Plates

*Bookmarks

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