Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Making Vocabulary meaningful...

Everyday Words make more sense....
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Have you ever noticed that it's the big words that stump your kids on their tests?  Of course you have....This is a strategy that I have used in science for years that I got from an excellent resource found from Seeds of Science - http://www.scienceandliteracy.org/.  

In fact, if you go on this website to the Teacher Resources section, you can find
over 40 strategies for teaching reading in the content area.   

http://www.scienceandliteracy.org/teachersupport/strategyguides 

This just happens to be my favorite strategy and it works for all content areas...

Today we reviewed for our social studies test and as we did I noticed a couple of times the students were still asking what certain words meant.  So I quickly created a T chart on the board.... I wrote down the word agriculture and said....agriculture is the social studies word but it really just means farming.  I was pleasantly surprised when my students said "what about architecture? exchange?"  We worked together to come up with a list similar to the one below - with some pictures of course. My good friend Sherrie wears "fancy glasses" to introduce her "fancy words." Kinda fun...but not necessary!



Social Studies Words
Everyday words
Agriculture

Architecture

Exchange

Origins

Migration
Farming

Buildings

Trade or to barter

Beginnings

To move to a new place


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