Building Vocabulary Skills & Confidence

I used to play a game with my friend Laura as a little girl. Her mom would give us a stack of official looking documents and we would highlight the words we knew, count up the number we had highlighted on the page and congratulate the winner on their superior intelligence.

I found out years later that these papers were old college essays that her mom (a prof) was recycling. What better source of language than first year psych!

As I was working with a grade one student today, that game came back to me. I was reading The Boxcar Children Graphic Novel with him and we began a game called “what word am I saying.” In this game I would say a word and he would search the page for it. It was a difficult game for him, though, as he is in french immersion and struggles with spelling.

I wondered if I would bring that old highlighting game back to build his confidence.

Here is my plan:

1. Photocopy several pages from a phonics reader or graphic novel.

2. Ask students to highlight the words they know. Don’t worry if they highlight words they don’t know the first time.

3. Write the vocabulary words on cue cards. Play a game where two people flip over a cue cards to reveal a word. Whoever calls out the word first wins the card (if you are playing against a student, give them a head start by flashing the card at them for 3 seconds before putting it down where you can see).

4. Next, go back to the story and read a sentence out loud to the student(s). Ask the student(s) to look for words in their pile of cue cards that match the words they hear you reading. For example, “What a great idea.” If students have “what” as one of their cards, they will put that card aside.

** Alternatively–    Create a BINGO card in which students fill in the blanks with the words from their cards and listen as you read, trying to get three in a row. Free PDF: WORDS I KNOW BINGO 5. Challenge students to take a page home, highlight the words they know, create a BINGO sheet or cue cards and test themselves, a friend or family member.

While I played this game with a young learner, it can easily be adapted to middle school and beyond. Follow the steps above with a more difficult text or with math/science concepts.

Be sure to leave a comment below talking about how this lesson worked in your own learning environment 🙂

Human Body Lesson Plan

This is a lesson to really get kids excited about the human body!

Materials:

• I pack of plasticine (* divided vertically in three will give you enough for a small skeleton)
• skeleton (optional) *I found a pack of 4 for $1.50 at the dollar store in the Halloween section!
• anatomy diagrams/ placemat
• App (optional)

LESSON 1: HANDS-ON EXPLORATORY

1. Jump right into the deep end by handing students a skeleton or by having them create their own.
2. Ask students to give the skeleton organs using the guide.
3. Now add blue and red veins.
4. Now add pink muscle.
5. Finally, add skin.

* If it’s possible, take a picture of students as they complete each step (delegate a classroom photographer if you have a student who words quickly)

 

LESSON 2: VOCAB

1. Have students either play the App to test their knowledge and vocabulary or use flashcards.
2. Students can work in pairs, playing “Memory Stack.” Students stack the flashcards in front of them and turn over one at a time. Whoever calls out the answer correctly gets to keep the card. The player with the most cards at the end of the stack wins.

LESSON 3: SELF CONTEXT

1. Students will either create a life size body using long paper which they trace themselves on, or use blank white t-shirts (second hand ones are great for this!)
2. Have students draw and label the organs on the t-shirt or body trace to demonstrate their understanding of where things go relative to their own bodies.

 STEP 3: REAL LIFE CONNECTIONS    

1. Not everyone can dissect a baby pig or a rat. Luckily there are lots of Apps out there that do it for us!

• Dissect a frog: very lifelike, and uses medical “tools” to open and pull back layers .
• DK Human body: vivid images and games.
• Build a bodyFOLLOW UP LESSONS:

• How muscles work
• modelling blood
• build a heart
• build a spine

Kinaesthetic Grammar and Punctuation

What a challenge! How do we get the paper tasks off the page and into the body? Want a creative way to have students more engaged in grammar and punctuation lessons? Here are three of the ideas I have come up with:

Martial Arts PUNCHuation:

1. Brainstorm with students all the punctuation marks they are familiar with. Generate a list on the board. Optional: introduce any new marks.
2. Explain that you have been trained in the secret ways of punctuation martial arts and would like to share your secret. This step works especially well if you say you are not sure, however, if the students are ready for that type of intensity.          Explain that you will start small and see how things go. (Boxing gloves are optional)
3. Start with the period. Extend your fist outward with a simple fist punch. This, of course, if the PERIOD. This martial marks move is quick and clean. It is the ideal move to cut off a sentence in its tracks.
4. Have students model the PERIOD punch while they say a simple sentence: “The weather is nice.” will do.
5. Next, use the same punch but curve your hand downwards when your hand is extended, like a COMMA. This martial arts move, the punch and twist, demonstrates the need to continue a sentence, but allows for a brief pause. (Have students model with a sentence)
6. The third move is the COLON. This requires a double hand punch, like the period, but sideways. This move calls your opponents attention to an upcoming list. (Have students model with a sentence)
7. The fourth move is the SEMI-COLON. This complicated move is for the pros. It is a combination of a colon and comma. Extend two hands outwards in a punch; at the last second, curve your bottom fist downwards. This graceful move is used to take a breath and connect two sentences. (Have students model with a sentence)
8. The last move is the QUOTATION mark. This move requires two upturned arms that make a double, open-handed strike in the air. This move is to about quick repetition of a persons words or an author’s ideas.
9. Have the students come up with their own moves to show off. Once you feel they have the language and usage down, have them write out the new words with visual mnemonics and an example sentence.

Wanted: Grammar/ Writing Culprits:

1. Test students on their grammar prowess with the inquiry activity.
2. Assign each student/ group of students a culprit of their choosing from the following worksheet.
3. Allow students to create a wanted poster with clues about why this culprit is wanted. For example: a noun was seen being used as a VERB rather than a person, place or thing. The Creepy Colon was trying to pass as a colon.
4. Students should create at least three examples of situations where the grammar was used incorrectly. They should also provide tips for the public on how to use the grammar correctly to avoid criminal writing of their own.

SLAP JACK grammar, punctuation and new vocab: This is a favorite of students, especially boys. It can get wild unless refereed properly. This game works well with either words or pictures.

1. Create the vocabulary or key terms that you wish to study (for example, parts of speech). Print each word on a piece of paper. It is best to laminate the cards, as the nature of the game is  hands-on and cards will soon get crumpled…
2. This activity works well with magnets placed on laminated cards and stuck to the board, OR as a floor game, where students sit in a circle with words in the center.
3. Call out a key word. For example, in one slap jack game I created for Parts of speech, I printed off tons of nouns, adjectives, adverbs, verbs, pronouns, etc. I placed the cards in the center of the circle. When I called out the word “noun” the students had 5 seconds to find any nouns. (this is where the mad scramble can sometimes get crazy as kids get very excited!)
4. Students sit back and show which card they found. If it IS a noun, they can keep it to add up at the end of the game. If it is NOT a noun, they must put it back AND an additional card they have won or miss a turn.
5. Play until until all the cards are collected.
6. Students count up their cards to see who won!

Alternatively, if the cards are places on the board with magnets, students go two-by-two. When you call out “noun” two students rush to the board, the first student to slap a noun gets to take the card. This works better than the ground/ circle because everyone has a 50% chance of winning the card and students do not get trampled…