It’s time to talk about chapter 3 of Word Nerds! This chapter is all about making introductions, which is perfect because I’m creating my Word Nerds bulletin board right now and planning out our weekly vocabulary routine.
I *really* wanted to share with y’all my vocabulary board, but sadly the pieces are sitting in my car. I just didn’t have enough “get up and go” to make it to my classroom today. I’ll share it in my next classroom decorating post though 🙂
Let’s talk about what I have accomplished in regards to chapter 3. This chapter is the perfect place to learn how to actually start teaching vocabulary the way it should be taught. Leslie and Margot give some fabulous examples and glimpses into their classroom throughout this chapter.. I LOVE the 3 column chart that they use to display the weekly vocabulary words and synonyms and antonyms. I have this planned for my board, as well as the cloze activity mentioned in this chapter.
To get started implementing these ideas, I first had to create my first week’s vocabulary words. We are starting off the year with our first novel Frindle.
I orginially came up with 8 words. With reading street, this is the average number of vocabulary words each week. But as I read Word Nerds, I started to realized that even though they only had 5 words each vocabulary cycle, they also studied synonyms and antonyms, so really it was more like 15 words. I decided to cut my list down to 5 to follow that thinking. Above are the ones that made the cut!
So then I made the 3 column chart like the one shown in the book. I’ll share that with y’all in day 4 of classroom decorating (hopefully tomorrow!). I *really* loved the cloze activity in this chapter, so I decided to go ahead and create those sentences and add them to the pocket chart. To find sentences that included these words, I simply googled “use plenty in a sentence” or “use promptly in a sentence”. The first result was a website called Yourdictionary.com. This website provided lots of sentences with each word. This saved a lot of time instead of creating my own.
Now, some of you may be asking why I didn’t just use the sentence that that word is from in the book. I wanted to expose the kids to different uses of these words, not just the content it was used in throughout the book. Don’t worry! We’ll be doing plenty of activities that included the sentences from the book:)
I LOVE these packs from Target!
I plan to use this activity to introduce the words on Monday (day 1 of each vocabulary cycle).
Another big aspect that I took away from this chapter was the use of vocabulary journals. I did this a little last year, but I never found a system that worked for me. I WOULD LOVE to hear your thoughts on this! Do you use vocabulary journals? How do you use them in your classroom?
I’ll be back with chapter 4 thoughts Tuesday! 🙂 Happy weekend, y’all! 🙂 🙂
I really want to bump-up my vocabulary instruction for this upcoming school year. I always try to come up new ideas, but nothing ever seems to work get way I would like I to. Based off of your blog posts, I ordered Word Nerds and can't wait for it to arrive on Monday! I am hoping to create vocabulary notebooks for my students that can really be a resource for them to use and refer back to, not just a notebook full of definitions and Frayer models. Hopefully your readers will share some ideas with you that you can then share with us in return 🙂 I've only just discovered your blog yesterday, but I'm already a huge fan!
Thank you for following my blog!!! I'm brainstorming vocabulary notebook ideas now and hope to share soon! You will LOVE Word Nerds!
You might have a post already about this…. but how do you teach spelling?
Becky
You've officially inspired me… I am definitely reading Word Nerd, now. I just ordered it on Amazon! 🙂 I've been looked for a better way to teach vocabulary. Thanks!
Mandy
Caffeine and Lesson Plans
Yay! You will LOVE it! 🙂
I love her ideas on how to introduce the words! I haven't used a journal in the past, but I will be using them this year. Loving this book! 🙂
Isn't it great!? I can't wait to get in the classroom and implement some of these ideas! 🙂
Have you had any ideas on your vocabulary journals yet? We are making Greek and Latin word journals from a TPT purchase we made. But I'd love to have one for this as well, but I don't want our kids to be overwhelmed. Maybe a journal they can create online??? We'd cut out the picture part unless we'd like them to import a photo from the internet.
I'm researching vocabulary journals as we speak and hope to post my ideas soon! I like the idea of an online journal! 🙂
After reading your blog, I ordered Word Nerds and love it. My district also uses Reading Street. Will you incorporate those vocabulary words?
After reading your big, I ordered Word Nerds and love all the ideas. My district also uses Reading Street. How do you plan to incorporate those words into your plans?
I read Word Nerds at the beginning of the summer and can't wait to use it. I am going to use a Frayer-Model inspired graphic organizer for each word. I have full page models for the first 2 weeks, then am going to shrink them so we can have 3 per page. I am giving these a section in our writing binders. We are going to make a Table of Contents for the beginning of the section. I like the idea of a digital journal, but we just don't have access to technology that often.
Thank you for the inspiration