Whole Group Reading: Vocabulary

 This week's focus for whole group reading is vocabulary instruction.  This is probably one of the hardest things for me to try to cram into 10 - 15 minutes of my 60 minute block!  

There's so much research that shows how a strong vocabulary helps students become better readers and builds higher comprehension.  So many of our students aren't exposed to higher level vocabulary outside of school, so it's important for us to give them opportunities to learn new words from a variety of content areas.

I teach vocabulary in several ways...  The first is through the Daily Vocabulary Practice book by Weekly Reader.  I found this at a teacher store when I was out of town, but I you can still find it online.  It has a half page for each day of the week, plus a weekly review.  Each week presents a new vocab theme and ties into a lot of my grammar instruction as well.  Right now, my class is finishing up a section of "science words," which is great for tying things into other subject areas.  

The other book I use is the Word A Day by Evan Moor.  This book just goes through a variety of words that students should be familiar with just for common knowledge.  There are different versions of this book for each grade level and it provides a "script" of sorts for each word of the day.  

My student teacher from last spring introduced me to this style of graphic organizer for vocabulary, so I whipped up my own and had our district copy center bind them into books for the students to use.  This is so convenient!  It took the kids a long time to get into this routine at the beginning of the year, but they're seasoned pros now!  (I'd like to get this into a Power Point or something for next year, but we'll see if that project happens this summer or not!)

I sometimes alternate the Word A Day book with content area words or vocabulary from our read aloud books.  I wish we had time to do all of it all the time, but that's just not possible.  (Although sometimes we do write in these journals during out science or social studies times and use them outside of the reading block.)  

You can see in the first picture an example of how I post our words of the week.  I use my super awesome Target pocket charts and Dollar Tree's word strips (I hoard those things) to post the words, adding them as we introduce them.  

I also use the Evan Moor Take It To Your Seat Vocabulary Centers during my work station time.  Those centers have some fun games and activities for vocab practice.  I'm hoping to incorporate more vocabulary work into my work stations next year since I feel so rushed to put it all in during my whole group block.

I hope this gives you some ideas on teaching vocabulary to your students!  I wanted to share my graphic organizer with you, so you can download the file here from Scribd.  (The cover is also included if you want to turn it into a book!)

Vocabulary 4 Part Organizer

Next week's post on whole group reading will cover our word wall time!  This was one part of Literacy First that I was initially very reluctant about, but that has ended up being a favorite in my classroom!

Happy Saturday!

Freebie ~ Folder Game Labels

I was going through my "Back to School" folder on my computer and found these labels that I made to organize my folder games.  I love free downloads, so I thought I'd share this one with everyone!

Here's the link to the PDF on Scribd: 

http://www.scribd.com/doc/98605691/Folder-Game-Labels-Avery-5160

This is my only photo of my folder game organization and it's pre-label days, but it does show how I have them sorted into baskets from Target (of course).  

For the most part, my folder games are the Evan Moor Take It To Your Seat center activities.  I have pretty much all of the reading and math activities for third grade.  I put mine in manila envelopes that I have laminated to keep them study.  It works really well in keeping all of the papers and pieces together.  (Small pieces are in plastic baggies within the envelopes.)  I do have some hand-me-down activities from my aunt, which are in just regular pocket folders.  

I went through all of my folder games and placed the labels in the upper right corner.  For each one, I have labeled the general subject, such as reading, math, language, spelling, vocabulary, or phonics.  Then, I specify the skill for each one.  For example, a math folder might be labeled "Subtraction w/ Regrouping" or a language folder might say "Action Verbs."  I found that labeling makes picking the activities a lot easier since many of the titles don't indicate the specific skill.  

The label download is for Avery 5160 labels.  Those are pretty standard size address labels, so if you're looking for a generic brand that's the number to look for.  The font that I used is from the very awesome site kevinandamanda.com.

Happy labeling!

Show & Tell

Today was our first day of our second phase of reading training for Literacy First.  We had to go through five days of training last summer and then have three more days to complete this year.  Instead of doing it during the summer, they had everyone come in for three Thursdays in a row....  I'd much rather come during the summer to be quite honest, but whatever.  I'm not the one who makes the decisions.  (I'm not bitter or anything either about not getting paid for this training like we were initially promised either...  Grrr.)

Anyway, one of the activities for this phase is to share some thing that we have used or implemented in our classroom this year.  Each of the three schools that are training together have their own day for "show and tell." My school was up first, so I decided I'd share with you all what I took for my "show and tell!"

I decided to bring some vocabulary resources, but that by no means makes me an expert in this area.  I really struggle with making this a consistent and effective component of my reading instruction, but I do feel like it's improved this year with using the Literacy First model.

Oh, and I can't figure out how to rotate pics in Blogger...  Is that possible?  I'm too lazy to go back and rotate them once I've loaded them on here.  Ugh.

What I Took:

Word-A-Day - Grade 3 (published by Evan Moor)

Daily Vocabulary Practice - Grade 3 (published by Weekly Reader)

"My Word-A-Day Journal" (created by me and made into books at our district copy center)

Samples of Word-A-Day vocab and content area vocab from a non-fiction book.  (And a pocket chart showing how I display it in my classroom.)

This is my first year using the Word-A-Day book, but I really like it.  I've been kind of bad about consistently doing it, but if you're looking for an effective way to introduce your students to new words, this book is a great starting point.  I believe I bought my copy at Mardel during their online sale, but I know it's a pretty common find at a lot of teacher supply stores.  (Here is a link to the third grade book on Amazon.)

I used to use the Daily Vocabulary Practice book a lot more, but I've not been a consistent with it this year as I've tried to adjust things to fit Literacy First.  (They're not big on the kids doing worksheets during whole group, but I believe there's a balance and that they need to still have the writing practice.)  My favorite thing about this book is that it works on parts of speech as well as vocab in content areas like math and science.  It's a nice, easy way to fit in some language instruction with your vocab.  Weekly Reader's books aren't as common at my local teacher store, but this one can be found on Amazon as well.  (Here's the link to the third grade one.) 

My pocket charts and word strips are two items that I grab in stores whenever I see them.  I think Target's small pocket charts are pretty much one of the best things ever.  I hot glue magnetic strips on the back so that I can put them on my dry erase boards.  I get my word strips from Dollar Tree.  I've been working on getting all of my vocab and stuff labeled and in order for next year so that I can just grab what I need and not have to sort through all of them to get what I need for the week.  It's a process!

"My Word-A-Day Journals" use a Frayer Model for the students to explain each word through it's definition, examples, sentences, and a picture.  My student teacher has used this a lot with the kids this semester and I've seen a lot of success.  It takes some time for the kids to get everything completed, so my tentative plan for next year is to introduce the words during whole group time and then to have them fill out the Frayer during work stations.  I plan to use this with the Word-A-Day book as well as content area vocab.  (If you Google or Pinterest search "Frayer Model" you'll find all sorts of variations and examples.)

So, there's a little "show and tell of a few of my vocab resources!  

I'm off to go enjoy my three day weekend!  Tomorrow is our "snow day" off!  (And by that I mean, it's our comp day for not using our snow days this year after they added 10 minutes on to our day this year.  I guess  I should thank global warming?!?  LOL)