Group items tagged

"Students will practice syllabification, reading, storytelling, and vocabulary when playing these games! This product contains directions and material for four different types of games to use during literacy centers: clapping out the syllables, vocabulary battle game, vocabulary flashcards, and storytelling. The games focus on the daily five activities pertaining to word work and writing. Each game would last 30 minutes."

"Students will practice syllabification, reading, storytelling, and vocabulary when playing these games! This product contains directions and material for four different types of games to use during literacy centers: clapping out the syllables, vocabulary battle game, vocabulary flashcards, and storytelling. The games focus on the daily five activities pertaining to word work and writing. Each game would last 30 minutes."

"Collect up gifs related to any vocabulary area you want to teach or revise. Embed them in an html page on your desk top and start a collection. Each time you add new ones send the html page to your students. (They will need to have a live connection on their computer to be able to view the gifs) Ask them to make notes of any words they relate to the images they see." This is another neat little tool with notes on how to use it from the very extensive collection by Nik Peachey. I'd suggest having the students make animated vocabulary gifs of words they want to learn/find useful.

Suggestions for teachers to pre-teach vocabulary (not always a good idea), but focuses on the Marazano Process, where a definition is given and students have to restate (in writing) in their own words. Also illustrates a way to connect vocabulary to students' own lives.

"Research supports the focus on text complexity and vocabulary. "The Baseball Study" by Recht and Leslie (1988) began by identifying the correlation between reading comprehension and student knowledge. Recht and Leslie discovered that students with low reading ability but high knowledge of baseball, outscored students with high reading ability but low knowledge of baseball on tests of comprehension. Landauer and Dumais (1997) took it a step further, finding that students acquire vocabulary up to four times faster when they read a series of related texts. Combined, these studies indicate the immense possibilities when we equip our students with the necessary vocabulary, providing them with sufficient prior knowledge before tackling reading tasks." This blog entry explores 5 terrific tools to help students, including one that makes texts simpler to help lower-level readers.

"The Frayer Model is a strategy that uses a graphic organizer for vocabulary building. This technique requires students to (1) define the target vocabulary words or concepts, and (2) apply this information by generating examples and non-examples. This information is placed on a chart that is divided into four sections to provide a visual representation for students."

"The Frayer Model is a vocabulary development tool. In contrast with a straight definition, the model helps to develop a better understanding of complex concepts by having students identify not just what something is, but what something is not." This is an example of a worksheet, which I wasn't able to download in the other citation. The sheet is quite straightforward, and looks useful, insofar as vocabulary can be taught through direct method. Good for important concepts, class discussion, and work with definitions.

"WordWriter is a new writing tool from BoomWriter. WordWriter allows teachers to create vocabulary lists that they want students to incorporate into a writing assignment. Assignments are distributed directly to students through the class lists that teachers create in their BoomWriter accounts. Students do not need email addresses to receive the assignments. Teachers can log-in at any time to see if and when a student has completed an assignment." "WordWriter assignments offer a good way to have students practice using new vocabulary words in context. Through the assignments you can have students demonstrate their understanding a word's meaning. You could also use WordWriter assignments to assess a student's ability to use the correct form of a verb. " T/H to R. Byrnes

This article suggest activities to review (Br. revise) vocabulary. Each is a communicative activity using groups or pairs, and requires only minimal tools. K-adult -- can be adapted to any level.

"This is one of my favorite websites for advanced sentence-level writing. The exercises on run-on sentences and fragments, for example, have lots of challenging vocabulary and funny situations. The exercises provide immediate feedback with cool (or yucky) "cyber prizes." "One caution: the exercises are only useful for advanced-level students who can understand the vocabulary and appreciate the humor." - by Nancy Overman New exercises appear to be added fairly regularly.

This site has short videos of cartoons illustratings words. I can't figure out how this can be for Grade School and Vocabulary for SAT/ACT. This might be a good resource.

R. Stannard training video on this important tool: "Quizlet 2017 is a complete introduction to all the basics of using Quizlet. In this video I will show you how to quickly get up and running with Quizlet without signing in and without making any flash cards. This is a useful educational technology that means you can revise and practice vocabulary at any time. Find flash cards and then start to revise the vocabulary through a series of games. This is a simple learning with technology tool that students and teachers can both use very quickly and easily. Watch these videos and when you know the basics you can also watch these more advanced videos. Learning with Technology Advanced Features in Quizlet"

"Rewordify.com is powerful, free, online reading comprehension and vocabulary development software. It helps people understand difficult English faster, helps them learn words in new ways, and helps teachers create high-interest learning materials from any English text passage. "Just paste in a difficult English sentence, paragraph, or more, or enter a web page URL and click the button. You'll instantly see an easier version, for fast understanding now. No dictionary needed! Plus, the easier version is specially highlighted to help build vocabulary." I don't know about the claims for learning English faster, but it seems like a great, free tool to help faster reading of web pages that are not designed for non-native speakers.

This picture dictionary has sound so students can see, read, and hear vocabulary elements. Each section also has little self-tests for students.

A free visual dictionary and online thesaurus. Enter a word to see related vocabulary. R Byrnes: "Snappy Words could be a good resource for students that are stuck in the rut of using the same words and phrases repeatedly in their writing. Snappy Words will give those students access to alternative words and their definitions much faster than thumbing through a thesaurus."

You paste an English text (sentence, paragraph, or more) into the site and Rewordify will simplify it. May help students understand difficult passages, but could also be used as the basis for lessons on vocabulary, paraphrasing, analyzing, etc. The "Smart HIghlighting" feature finds the hard words and phrases and highlights them. See the teacher demo video on the site.

This is a BYU-sponsored archive of a wide variety of copora. May be of use in vocabulary work. Includes a Wikipedia corpus, TIME Magazine, Google Books in American and British English, as well as Spanish.

A way to let your students use their smart phones to practice vocabulary when and where they want to.

R. Stannard shows how to create flashcards in any language for this site.

R. Stannard shows how to use Quizlet and find ready-made sets in the interface. Quizlet also works inside Edmodo and can be used for tests and assessments. He also recommends that you teach students how to use Quizlet themselves, so as to review concepts and vocabulary for themselves.

This site, The Blues Maker, as described by Nik Peachey, lets the user create his/her own blues tune, and as Nik points out, is an excellent way to improve listening skills, vocabulary, and pronunciation. The 10 steps are an excellent project to help students begin to learn more about this type of American (and now international) music.