Words, words, words

Our discussion about vocabulary really got me thinking about how much intentional vocabulary instruction I have in my classroom.  It’s pretty infrequent.  Before a guided reading lesson we will preview the book together and I will point out unfamiliar words.  Most of the words in our guided reading books are sight words so I rarely provide context when we learn a new word before reading… it is usually just me pointing it out.  I am going to try to be more aware of that and use the word in a sentence and have the kids use the word in a sentence before they try to read the book.

I am also starting a vocabulary center next week.  I got the idea for another teacher at my school.  He created a center using the list of 100 words kids should know by 1^st grade.  There is a worksheet like this for each week, spanning 22 weeks:

week 1 vocab center

The words included in this center are not our kindergarten sight words that we teach in our curriculum.  The teacher who gave me the idea does no instruction on the words; the kids teach themselves the words at the center.  I think that might be a little too hard for some of my class, so I created word cards to go with each week’s worksheet.  This is the word cards that go with the worksheet above:

week 1 word cards

I think this will make the center a little easier, especially for my ESOL kids.  Most of the words included are words that they will see in the guided reading books.  I am really excited to see what kind of an impact this center has on reading performance in my room.  I think I am going to send home a half a page information sheet about the center to parents.  Then I will include the week’s vocabulary words in my weekly newsletter so that parents can practice having the students write and use the words at home as well.  Hopefully this will be a good first step at introducing vocabulary instruction into my classroom.