Hi friends! I posted this picture on Instagram this morning and I had a lot of requests for the graphic organizer I used (you can find it here), along with a few questions about the lesson, so I thought I’d just do a blog post. Every year, I feel like I lack in teaching vocabulary. I know it’s SO important, but lots of times I feel like we simply memorize definitions and move on and that doesn’t help anyone. Teaching vocabulary is so much more than just memorizing definitions. We did a vocabulary lesson Friday that I felt was so much more impactful.
We are currently right in the middle of our novel study on Tuck Everlasting and we are LOVING it! We are learning 7 new words (for the first part of the novel) that are from the text and most of these words are ones that the kids are very unfamiliar with.
Here’s how our lesson went down on Friday:
At the beginning of the lesson, I gave out copies of this graphic organizer.
We looked at each word one at a time. First, I had the kids read the definition to themselves and then raise their hand if they could give me a meaning for the word in their own words, not the formal definition. This cleared up a lot of misconception and was the perfect transition into the first major part of the graphic organizer. After discussing what the word meant, we brainstormed parts of the story where that particular word could be found.
Then it was time to search! I had tables compete against each other to find the word first. Whoever found the word first earned a point for their table and at the end of the lesson, that table earned a class cheer.
Once we found the word in the text, we read the sentence out loud and wrote it down on the graphic organizer. Then we moved onto the next word and repeated the same process.
After completing each step for every vocabulary word, we broke into groups of 3. I gave each group a vocabulary word to work with. I also supplied the groups with a sentence strip card and a marker. Each group had to find their word in the text and explain what was happening in the plot when the author used that word.
One class had a little extra time after the group work, so we did a snowball fight to review the meanings of the vocabulary words.
I loved this little lesson and I know I’ll be using it again in the future!
Hi Leslie!! Thank you for sharing this. Super helpful for my next writing lesson. I'm a 5th grade teacher who has been following your blog for a while now. Your resources are SO USEFUL.
I just started my own blog (partly inspired by you) and I would love if you checked it out (balancedteachers.com). I want to know if it's applicable to real teachers out there in the world 🙂
Thank you for everything you share!
What a great way to get kids to better understand new words! Do you use this activity before reading the section or after? Thanks!