I know there are many vocab lessons out there. But here is one more. This particular lesson was from my Utah Studies class about World War II.
I gave the students a list of Vocabulary words from the chapter. Some words were places, some people, and others - other or misc. I asked the students to use their prior knowledge about the English language to put the words into three catergories. I didn't tell them at the beginning what three catergories. I heard. "A capital letter means a person." "I know a few countries, maybe we should have places". Students used their background knowledge to come up with three catergories. Once students had three sections, then the real work began. The students could work with a partner and discuss the words and what the meanings were.
The words were
FDR Germany Soviet Union Truman Great Britain opaque artillery
immerse Elbert D Thomas Japan ration processed food synthetic
Hawaii Tooele Clearfield Kearns surcharge newsreel Wendover
mess Hiroshima Delta transient Nagasaki Brigham City
ecstatic communism homogenous
After the students divided the words into three groups. I asked them to find them
in the book. We read some of the chapter out loud as a class. Whenever we found the
word, I was amazed at the students enthusiasm.
By using the words and putting them into groups, the students were able to make connections with the material. It allowed the students to make connections that I believe will be
longlasting.
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Great way to access schema. It always helps when they can make connections. Nice work.
ReplyDeleteI used something similar as a review lesson to end my Civil War unit - I used the words from a lesson from a Saturday Seminar. I gave each of the cooperative groups the same words on word strips and they had 10 minutes to put them into categories. Every group came up with different word sorts - I heard so much discussion about who the people, the places, the objects, and events were and the possibly connections between the vocabulary words. They enjoyed explaining why they chose to sort the words they way they did to the class. Afterwords we used the same words to play "password" - also an idea from the Saturday Seminar, but they wanted to play until we had used every word. They had much more understanding of the vocabulary from the Civil War after these activities. It really cemented their understanding of who was who and what was what. Everyone may not have been able to pronounce Appomattox or Antietam, but they knew what they were! I'll do this again with other units because it was so successful and everyone was engaged.
ReplyDeleteThat is a great idea. I have had trouble with many of those words in that chapter because many are words that students have heard but are not really sure of the meaning. I will have to give that a try.
ReplyDelete