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Rafe Esquith: Five Tips to Help Children Develop Their Natural Gifts

#1906. Vocabulary Ideas

Reading/Writing, level: Middle
Posted Fri Aug 11 18:03:56 PDT 2000 by Gale (gaelic@kltymail.com).
Reed Middle School, Duncanville, TX
Materials Required: paper
Activity Time: 5-20 min
Concepts Taught: Vocabulary

Insert vocabulary words into jounal questions (if you do journaling) some time after giving definitions. Example: If a vocab word was "delectable" ask "What is the most delectable thing you've ever eaten?" Have several students share their entries.

Devide the words up among your students. Have students each make an illustrated card with a sentence that uses their word, and have them present this card as a review for the vocab test.

There are several sites on the internet that have famous quotes which you can search for using key words. Plunk in the vocabulary words and see what you can get. If you find quotes using these, you can have students paraphrase these quotes (they may NOT use the bolded vocabulary words in their paraphrase). I've used this in vocab tests as well. You can sometimes have the students search themselves for these. You can also have students respond to these quotes in quickwrites/journals.

Bring in examples of vocab words. When I taught the word "intricate" I brought in several intricate things and had them see if they could think of others.

If words have a similar meaning, discuss what makes the words different. For instance, if I had giddy and jovial on the same test, when explaining the words, I would with the class see what types of behaviors a giddy person would do, and what types of things a jovial person would do. Some would overlap. some wouldn't, etc.