Vocabulary Posters for Common Class Times

Word Consciousness, an awareness of words and how they work, seems to be the gateway into developing a students' vocabularies.  Michael F. Graves, Susan Watts-Taffe in "For the Love of Words: Fostering Word Consciousness in Young Readers" (2008) promote a six part framework for Fostering Word Consciousness:

1. Create a word-rich environment

2. Recognize and promote adept diction

3. Promote wordplay

4. Foster word consciousness through writing

5. Involve students in original investigations

6. Teach students about words

In the beginning of the year, my focus is on #1, creating a word-rich environment.  To begin addressing vocabulary acquisition in my classroom, I try to use posters like the one below (there are five) during my daily routines in order to remind me to use "spicy" words during common class times or transitions.  I hang them up in non-prime location spots because they are just there for me to use orally so that students are exposed to rich vocabulary at all times of the day. 

You can download this file here:  Vocabulary for Common Class Times

I don't recall where I got this list, but a while ago, I typed it up and hung it in my classroom.  Please let me know if you have any other words to suggest and I will revise the file and repost.

I hope everyone has gotten off to a good start this year!

Happy Teaching!

Anna

Degrees of Words / Shades of Meaning

It is getting to be that time of year.  The time when I have read enough read alouds to start harvesting vocabulary words for my degrees of words word wall project.

Basically, I go through all the books and look for words that mean scared.  I put sticky notes on the page where the word is (first graders would have a difficult time reading 2nd and 3rd grade books that I have read to them in order to find a particular word, but scaffolding them like this makes this doable).  The students turn to the page where the sticky note is, write down the sentence it is in, or paraphrase what is going on by using the word.  They draw a picture in the picture space, and turn it in.  We go through the words as a class and decide which words are stronger than scared(and go higher up on the thermometer), and which words are less than scared (worried, concerned, etc.).  We discuss how synonyms don't mean the same thing, but that word choice is important to accurately describe the situation.  Most of the time authors use the vocabulary words correctly, but one time, we felt that the author could have chosen a better word given the severity of the situation.  So we wrote a letter to the author as a class giving him a suggestion using a more appropriate word.  So fun.  The kids really get into vocabulary at this point, and their writing blooms.

When I get  a chance, I will post my list of books I read that contain the words for scared, but it is pretty easy to find books for this, because that is a very common feeling in characters.

Happy February!