Vocabulary Instruction

Vocabulary instruction is extremely important in the classroom.  I personally feel like I do an o.k. job at it, but know there is a lot of room for improvement.  About 1/3 of my class are ESL (English as a Second Language) students, and these kids need it probably more than the others.  My graduate class textbook (see reference below) gives us several strategies to use to help build a student's vocabulary.  I already use some of them, but others are a little advanced for my first graders, and especially for the ones that need this sort of instruction.

The overall main thing that a person needs to do to gain vocabulary is to read, and most importantly, independently.  As a teacher, it is important for me to be reading everyday to the whole class, because this exposure can also help each student increase their amount of vocabulary. No matter if my students are in whole group or small group instruction,  it is imperative that I front-load them with important words in the text that they will read/hear. If they already have a sense of the difficult word, it will be easier to comprehend what is happening in the text if they hear it before.  The more advanced reader we are, the more vocabulary we have. This should not come as a surprise . . . so lets get everyone reading!!!

Some good activities that I do in my class to help increase my students' vocabulary are: word wall writing (practice words on a white board), word posters (write a word and illustrate it; write a sentence with the word in it), dramatizing words (acting out a word and having another student guess the word), and word sorts (grouping words that are alike; could be by the ending like -ing, or the beginning sound like ch-). I take some of these activities and also make them into board games.  The students really enjoy when they get to play a game, and little do they know they are also learning at the same time!  These activities seem to work well in my classroom, but as I said before, I am always looking for more, successful ways, to increase vocabulary instruction.  Do you have any activities???

Tompkins, G.E. (2010). Literacy for the 21st century: A balanced approach (5th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc.