The main topic at our Friday Staff Development K-12 ITRT meeting was on vocabulary instruction. We focused on Marzano’s Six Steps to Vocabulary Instruction. After lunch, we had the entire afternoon to build and come up with some new strategies and ideas that teachers could use in their classroom. The elementary ITRTs threw togehter this Literacy Training Blog that contains information you could use at your convienence. Here are some other great ideas that we came up with:
Context Clues Activity and Padlet:
One of my favorite ideas came from Julie Goode, one of our Elementary ITRTs.
In this Context Clues Lesson, the teacher will use a nonsense word in a small vague sentence. The teacher reads the sentence, and the students try to guess what the word means. After each student guess, the teacher extends the sentence with more context clues for the students to figure out the meaning of the nonsense word. Here’s an example of what the teacher would read to the students.
A great way for the students to record their answers each time the sentence is read is using a website called Padlet. All the teacher needs to do is create a “pad,” and the students fill out their answer each time. Students can view what others are guessing. We played the game a few times: Check out this padlet example we came up with.
More Padlet uses:
Have students log into the padlet and use vocabulary words in sentences.
Have students insert a picture or take a picture showing the meaning of the word.
GotBrainy.com:
GotBrainy is a fun website that allows users to make their own “motivational posters.” Students come up with a sentence using the vocabulary word, choose an image to add, and the site does the rest! Here are some fun examples:
I think this is also pertains to me…
Although defaced, it is clever…
Today’s Meet:
TodaysMeet is a great website to make a quick chat room. I have talked about it in a few other posts. Have your students’ parents write quick sentences to your class using the vocabulary words as well. This could be a great way to get parents involved in your vocabulary instruction. Here’s an example that we made at our meeting yesterday.
If you would like to chat about ways you can incorporate these ideas into your classroom, feel free to shoot me an email!
