Vocabulary Routines

I love teaching vocabulary. Over the years I've developed some routines that work well to get the kiddos learning the new words. 

You know you're doing something right when students using these words in their daily conversations, and see them use new and old words in their writing. Yay, something finally stuck!

I do a lot of discussion and partner sharing the first three days we learn new words. We usually have 8 or 10 vocabulary words each week. I'll introduce half the words the first day, and the other half the second day. This video of Anita Archer really shows how I introduce the vocabulary words:

Day three we discuss the words with partners. Nothing too exciting that day, but it leads up to using the words in sentences. This is my favorite day - we work on writing sentences with correct conventions and get more practice using our vocabulary words. Win-win!

I have the students do this in partners. I believe the structure is called "Sage and Scribe". With this structure one student is the writer, and the other is the "teller". The teller tells the writer what to write down. We switch roles with each word so both partners get the chance to do both roles.

I like using this structure because it keeps all of the students engaged. The teller knows that they need to check what the writer writes, because the sentence doesn't always come out the same! It also eliminates the one student who never does anything because "they can't think of what to write" and keeps behavior issues to a minimum, too.

I stress writing sentences correctly because it leads to my vocabulary assessments. Guys.. these really up the level of rigor and force the students into those higher levels of thinking!

Students are required to rate their level of understanding for each word on a scale of 1-5. It starts off with 1 - not even knowing if it is a real word through 5 - writing the definition and using the word correctly in a sentence. I tell my students that writing the definition and a sentence for every word is the goal, and they can only choose a lower number if they are blanking on that word. Hey, if my 2nd graders can do this independently (with lots of modeling, guiding, and training ahead of time) then  anyone can do it!

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