One important area that can really affect a students reading ability is vocabulary development. It is so important for reading comprehension that children are given explicit teaching and repetitive use of new vocabulary. Without vocabulary knowledge, readers can struggle to understand what it is they are decoding, and as they move onto more complicated texts, students are ready to focus more on the meaning of what they are reading rather than just saying the words in front of them. We need to teach children vocabulary outside of their everyday oral language use. The vocabulary taught should be rich and meaningful to the students. I usally spend about 15 minutes a day on explicit teaching of vocabulary but once taught it is then referred back to as often as possible. This blog is breakdown of how I teach it in my classroom.
1. Make a List of Words
For the vocabulary to be meaningful to the children, they should have a say in the words they get to focus on and these should be words that they are coming across in their reading, whether that be through the use of a read aloud, book club book or even PM reader.
Each week as a class we make a list of words that we come across in our reading and our lessons that we either don’t know the meaning of yet, or that we think would be a rich vocabulary word that would aid our writing. These words are added to a whiteboard in the room and the list grows as the week goes on. When it gets to Friday, I choose 8 words from our list to use the following week for our vocabulary work.
2. Definitions, Synonyms, Antonyms & Sentences
The next thing we focus on is filling out the template you see in the picture above with the definition, synonyms, antonyms. A copy of these can be found here. Each day we focus on 2 of the words that had been chosen from our list the previous week. I get the students to work in pairs to find the definition in the dictionary. Once found, we talk about the definition together and rephrase it in our own way so it is understandable. We look at whether the word has more than one meaning and what type of a word it is and whether or not there are any prefixes or suffixes associated with the word.
Once we have decided on a definition together and the children understand the different meanings of the word, we discuss synonyms and antonyms for it. We brainstorm as a class and along with the definition add these to the board/worksheet. Sometimes through synonyms and antonyms we will come across other wow words that we have learned or will find some new words to add to our list.
Finally, when students have a good grasp of the new wow word, they independently write their own sentence for it. This must be a complex or interesting sentence and I encourage them to always try to write a sentence that has their new wow word and an old wow word in it.
This wow word then gets added to our Wow Words display in our class. The worksheet that the children fill out for their vocabulary then gets put into their vocabulary section of a writing workshop folder that they have. (I will do another post all about the writing workshop folder and how it’s used).
How many wow words you do is up to you and the level your class is at. In second class I taught one new word a day and now in 4th class I teach two new words a day. When I first started explicit vocabulary teaching I did 5 words a day and the students would look up their own definitions one day, then synonyms and antonyms another day and then do five sentences the day after and what I found for me and my class was that this way of doing it wasn’t working for the children I had in front of me. The students would often not fully understand the definition in the dictionary and because they were doing five words a day, they would mix up the definitions of the words with each other. The synonyms and antonyms seemed to be completely lost. All of this and they were all working at a different pace, so while one child was finished looking up all five words, another could be still looking for the first in the dictionary. You need to judge what the students in front of you are able for and then work towards that.
3. Story Starter
At the end of a week or two, depending on how many words you have done, we then do a story starter. Here the children are giving a set time to start writing the beginning of a story using the new vocabulary learned that week. I usually set a timer of 15 minutes. The idea is not that they write and entire story but just that they begin one and show understanding of the words they have learned that week, using them in their correct context. If a student is struggling for ideas for a story I will let them pick out a story prompt card before we start the timer. This story is then kept in their story starter section of their writing workshop folder and if the child wishes to come back and continue it during writing workshop they can.
4. Assessment
Every month I do an assessment of all of the words that we have learned that month. Some months this is a Kahoot quiz where the children have to find anytonyms and synonms for their wow words or I’ll do a cloze procedure type assessment where the children will need to fit the words correctly into sentences.
I try to use our wow words as often as I remember throughout the day and during our reading and read alouds will always make a point of pausing if one of them comes up, to get the class to remind me of the meaning of the word or another word for the word and so on. Repetition is so important for the children to attain the new vocabulary. It’s all well and good teaching it each day but if it is not revised and come back to, the children might not come across it again for a while and when they do, could have completely forgotton it.