Vocabulary Workshop

Last Thursday I went to a workshop where the speaker was Kate Kinsella.  It was all about our ELL population and how to expand their academic vocabulary...which, in truth, ALL of our students can benefit from this instruction.  I worked with my teaching partner on Friday to create a list of words that will help our students with our first unit next year, and we decided to use the 12 powerful words for testing.  Trace, formulate, describe, analyze, infer, evaluate, support, explain, summarize, compare, contrast, predict.  We are creating sentence frames so the students can practice using them.

We'll give the word, break it into syllables, provide synonyms and/or antonyms if any, give the definition, and give two examples on how to use it.  Then we'll provide a sentence frame for the students to use.  First, they will write it down, then share with a partner.  Then they'll share with the class.  While the students are sharing whole-class, they'll have an opportunity to jot down other answers that they like.  Then they'll turn to a partner and (verbally) share the new way using the sentence frame.  Students get multiple opportunities to practice using the word with a lot of support.

After that, the students will get a second frame that will help set them up for writing.  In the first (oral) frame, the students are given the word and they have to decide how to use it.  The second sentence frame forces them to use it and provides some context to complete the sentence.  It sets them up to use it in a paragraph.  We've decided to do our first writing as a compare and contrast.

We're not allowed to share the templates, but I did recreate one because I could not open the .docx which was slightly frustrating.  Good thing I'm comfortable with the computer and recreating things!

And may I just say that coming up with sentence frames is a difficult task with some words!  I'm excited to teach vocabulary even though it will be a lot of work for the first year.  After this, we'll have all of our words.