Happy Wednesday, friends! Today we introduced two vocabulary activities from Word Nerds and I was so pleased with how they went! We “played” Counting Dude, Bragging Dude and Word Colors. To build excitement, I’ve been talking about these two activities for the past two weeks and the kids were so excited to do them today. I sometimes call these practice activities “games” so that the kids have a positive view and don’t think of it as “work”. They don’t realize they’re learning because they just think they’re having fun, which they are! 🙂
Counting Dude, Bragging Dude
If you don’t know what Counting Dude, Bragging Dude is, I HIGHLY suggest you go read Word Nerds! This book is filled with wonderful strategies for teaching vocabulary. For this activity, you break your class into two groups. In one group, the kids are the Bragging Dudes, while the other are Counting Dudes. The two groups pair up with a person from the other group and the Bragging Dude writes a 7up sentence (a sentence with 7 or more words) that contains his or her vocabulary word that is on the lanyard.
The Counting Dude verifies that the sentence is in fact a 7up sentence and adds additional details if needed.
Once the sentence is complete, the Bragging Dude celebrates by doing a little dance (think NFL Touchdown!) or simple giving themselves a pat on the back. These two sweet girls were celebrating a fabulous 7up sentence with a little square dancing! 🙂 🙂
Then they move on and repeat this process.
I was thrilled with this activity because it not only allowed for vocabulary practice, but it also helped us get in some writing practice! I even heard some of my kids saying “You need to add an adjective here!” Insert smiling teacher face! 🙂
Word Colors
For Word Colors, you write your vocabulary word on a card and color the word with a certain color that represents that word. Then on the back of the card, you have to explain and justify your color choice…talk about using those higher order thinking skills! I was thrilled with some of the responses I got with this activity. We still need more practice, but for the first time I think they did pretty good!
**I don’t usually have my kids use scrapbook paper for their work, but I found it in my cabinet and they have been dying to use it. Whatever creates excitement, right?
On the back, it says “I chose this color because it reminds me of muscles and if you are doing something forcefully you are using your muscles”
Do you have an activity that you love for teaching vocabulary? I’d love to hear it! Leave a comment below! 🙂
So glad you posted about your vocabulary activities. I've started with vocabulary activities from Word Nerd as well.I love the Word Color game. I haven't tried that one yet, but it would go great with our Character Trait vocabulary words for this week. I may try that one tomorrow. I kind of modified one of the games which we play at least twice a week. Students meet with their word families- related words synonym and antonyms. They greet each other and say how they are related. They were so shy at first, but now they are pros. They enjoy getting their lanyards and participating in vocabulary activities. So, glad I joined the book study this summer! Can't wait to read future posts.
Shepherd's Shining Stars
After vocabulary has been taught and students just need practice using the words, we play "Vocab on the Move!" This is a game similar to Hedbandz. I write the word on a post-it and stick it to their forehead. They have not seen the word, but everyone else can see it. I give them a list of questions such as "What part of speach am I?" "What is an example of me?" "What is a non-example of me?" and so on. You can alter the list of questions to fit your content. The students are either paired or wander the room and ask random peers the questions on their list. When they think they know their word they write it down and sit down. Then we see who got it right! It's a fun way to review and the kids love it!
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