As reading teachers, we all know the importance of teaching vocabulary. Having more than one strategy in your toolbox is important when you are working with struggling learners. Last year, my students struggled to recall the meaning of words we were working on. They had an easier time learning new words when exposed to them in different ways. Two of my favorite activities were word maps and visual vocabulary.
Visual Vocabulary is an easy activity that the kids love. I had students divide their notebook paper into two columns. In column 1, we wrote the word and its meaning. In the next column, students created a picture that helped them remember the word. Easy, right? My students seem to recall the meaning of words and also were practicing the important skill of visualizing.
Word maps help students build important connections in order to remember and use new words. Sometimes for our word maps I would just write a word we focusing in center of chart paper and students would work together to come up with as many associations as they could and write them down. For example, our word was ancient and students wrote the pyramids, fossils, my teacher :) etc. Other times I used graphic organizers. Here is a link to one of my favorites:
What are your favorite ways to teach new vocabulary?
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