Do your students detest having to define vocabulary words? Don"t confine them to worksheetsturn the study of affixes and roots into a hands-on contest to create context-rich vocabulary puzzles.
Flip-a-Chip: Examining Affixes and Roots to Build Vocabulary
The Big Green Monster Teaches Phonics in Reading and Writing
A big green monster helps students build their reading fluency and word recognition skills through choral reading, literacy center activities, and writing stories.
Catching the Bug for Reading Through Interactive Read-Alouds
Students learn about story structure, new vocabulary, and a variety of reading strategies by participating in an interactive read-aloud of Miss Bindergarten Stays Home From Kindergarten by Joseph Slate.
Guided Comprehension: Knowing How Words Work Using Semantic Feature Analysis
Based on the Guided Comprehension Model developed by Maureen McLaughlin and Mary Beth Allen, this lesson introduces students to the comprehension strategy of knowing how words work.
Exploring Cross-Age Tutoring Activities With Lewis and Clark
Interaction and adventure draws high school and elementary school students together as they analyze stories about the Lewis and Clark expedition.
Everyone Loves a Mystery: A Genre Study
Students track the elements of mystery stories through Directed Learning-Thinking Activities, story maps, and puzzles. Then they offer clues for other readers as they plan and write original mystery stories.
Word Sorts for Beginning and Struggling Readers
Students are introduced to short-vowel word families and learn to sort words alone and with a partner using the Word Family Sort activity.
Fact or Fiction: Learning About Worms Using Diary of a Worm
Students often believe that fiction writers make everything up, seldom realizing how research worms its way into entertaining writing. In this lesson, students read Diary of a Worm to find out how fact merges with fiction.
Going on a Shape Hunt: Integrating Math and Literacy
Students participate in a scavenger hunt for shapes; reading, writing, and discussion of shapes encourage literacy and math skills.
Astronomy Poetry: Combining Poetry With the Content Areas
Students' responses to this lesson will be out of this world after they've researched astronomy to write poetry and compile a poetry book.
You Can't Spell the Word Prefix Without a Prefix
Students explore the role of prefixes, as well as their origins and meanings, and examine how the understanding of prefixes can improve comprehension, decoding, and spelling.
Using Personal Connections to Build an Understanding of Emotions
What makes you happy? What makes you sad? Connecting words to feelings enriches vocabulary and helps with concept development.
Artistic Elements: Exploring Art Through Descriptive Writing
Paint a vivid picture in your reader's mind with good descriptive writing! Artwork provides the perfect starting point for practicing descriptive writing that conveys color, shape, line, and mood.
Internalization of Vocabulary Through the Use of a Word Map
Students practice with words and develop both definitional and contextual knowledge through two agents—purposeful sequencing of steps and collaboration with peers.
Learning Vocabulary Down By the Bay
Students sing a popular children's song, follow along with a picture book that contains the lyrics and illustrations, and then participate in activities to reinforce learning of the vocabulary words.
Choosing, Chatting, and Collecting: Vocabulary Self-Collection Strategy
Students identify interesting words from Shakespeare's plays and add them to a classroom vocabulary collection.
Show What You Know: Read, Write and Solve Math Problems
Informational texts, iPads, and interactive games, oh, my! Help students journey through multimodal texts to identify and solve real-world mathematics problems using writing and apps.
Bringing Economic Vocabulary to Life Through Video Posters
Imagine if vocabulary could come alive with the click of a button! Students create video posters to demonstrate knowledge of new economics vocabulary.
Tell Me Your Story: Video-Inspired Vocabulary Writing
Students watch a sample of artistic video clips online and respond through creative writing while using the vocabulary words they are currently studying.
Using Story Innovation to Teach Fluency, Vocabulary, and Structure
An instructional strategy called story innovation teaches students fluency, comprehension, vocabulary, and story structure. This unique strategy can be adapted for many purposes.