Vocabulary

Introduction

Vocabulary Building Activities

Charmaine Trice

3rd Grade

Listed below are several activities to help students become independent word learners.  These activities that I found online and on Pinterest will enable my students to improve comprehension of text, speaking, listening and writing.

Wordle is a free web that allows you to create a word cloud based on the frequency of words in a particular text.  My children love it!  It can be used to stimulate students’ thinking about meaning and importance of words as they analyze, create, and publish wordles.

  • Type your vocabulary words
  • Paste vocabulary into applet
  • Manipulate visual display by selecting the color, scheme, layout, and font

Word Clouds can be used to highlight keywords and themes to prepare students for reading as well as prompt discussion after reading.

What’s My Word?

  • Students are given a vocabulary word that they have already had some experience with. 
  • Write the word on a sentence strip.  Make a headband out of the sentence strip.  Students do not know what word they have been assigned.
  • Student use the front of their activity sheet to record clues about their word before making a guess.
  • They will ask other students for synonyms, antonyms, places their word would be found, and other clues.
  • Once they have filled the front of their activity sheet, student guesses their word.

After guessing the word, students complete the back.  Activity on the back,

  • Look up the word using the dictionary.
  • What does the word mean in your own words?
  • What are other words that relate to my words?

By the end of the activity students have thought about the word in multiple ways, in addition to the definition.

 

Student-Friendly Definitions

  • Partner into A and B
  • Each partner should choose one word each from an earlier selection
  • Then take turns providing a student-friendly definition for the word

Vocabulary Twister

  • Use adhesive Velcro to connect the vocabulary words to each color circle
  • Two teams (3-4 per team)
  • As you read a definition, players a hand or foot on the proper word

The Twister Game can be made from coloring circles with permanent markers on a plastic shower curtain.

Through using different vocabulary building activities in the classroom, I will help students commit new words to memory by having them make real-world connections and experiences to the word themselves.  This will allow them to remember and make meaningful connections that will have a lasting impression!