Tell Me Your Story: Video-Inspired Vocabulary Writing

Overview

Featured Resources

From Theory to Practice

 

OVERVIEW

In this recurring lesson, students watch an artistic video clip and use the words in their current vocabulary lesson to process the content through several types of creative writing. This gives students a chance to write in a unique voice and to understand the meaning of their vocabulary words in a new context. They also have the opportunity to analyze their peers’ use of the vocabulary when they read and discuss each other’s stories.

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FEATURED RESOURCES

• Creative Writing Prompts: Students are guided to consider the content of a particular video through one of this series of four creative writing prompts, which use their vocabulary lessons.
  
  
• Peer Analysis Guide: After completing the creative writing prompt, students read through a partner’s work, using this guide to consider whether the vocabulary is used appropriately and to respond to their partner’s story.

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FROM THEORY TO PRACTICE

Bromley, K. (2009). Vocabulary instruction in the secondary classroom. In S.R. Parris, D. Fisher, & K. Headley (Eds.), Adolescent literacy, field tested: Effective solutions for every classroom  (pp. 58-69). Newark, DE: International Reading Association.

• All students, especially struggling adolescent learners, need vocabulary instruction before, during, and after reading narrative, nonfiction, and electronic texts to comprehend and learn content material.
  
  
• When you teach new vocabulary, attach a visual or sensory image to a word, because this greatly enhances remembering (Bromley, 2007).
  
  
• Teachers who vary their methods of teaching new vocabulary build student motivation for word learning that will help students learn content.

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