Vocabulary
Title: Lesson Plan Index- Vocabulary
Summary: This is a wonderful website if you need lessons plans on vocabulary, especially since the grade level is included for each plan. The lesson plans have a great variety. Some of the lesson plans are based on children’s books, and others on a various topics. You will be able to find a lesson plan that would meet your classroom needs.
Rationale: I included this website under vocabulary because each of the lesson plans are on vocabulary topics.
Title: Teaching Vocabulary To Advanced Students: A Lexical Approach
Address: http://www3.telus.net/linguisticsissues/teachingvocabulary.html
Summary: This website is a great website to on how to teach vocabulary. It explains why a lexical approach is beneficial and the different aspects of lexis. It is a great website for any teacher of any classroom. This website explains how to help students make meaning of the vocabulary words. They encourage the use of authentic material when teaching and correlations between words.
Rationale: I included this website under vocabulary because it explains how to teach vocabulary with a lexical approach. I choose this website because I think it is a wonderful resource if you are unsure of how to teach your vocabulary. It gives the approach and also explains why this approach is useful.
Title: Interactive Word Walls
Address: www.theschoolbell.com/Links/word_walls/words.html
Summary: The word wall link on the School Bell web site is an excellent source for teachers wanting fresh ideas on how to make and use interactive word walls in their classrooms. There are step-by-step instructions on how to construct a word wall and many links to help teachers wanting to expand students’ vocabularies with the use of this powerful tool. One link, word wall lists k-3 is especially helpful because the lists are organized by grade level and the words are the proper size for printing.
Rationale: If teachers use the interactive word walls, their students’ vocabularies will undoubtedly grow because the word walls expose children to new words continuously throughout the year. The idea of making special word walls, such as history, science, and holiday vocabulary adds a valuable tool to any teacher’s toolbox. Many different approaches will need to be used to help kids build a rich vocabulary and word walls are an approach that has been proven to work.
Title: Fluency and Vocabulary Development
Address: www.etap.org/langarts_K_8.html
Summary: This web site has a complete Language Arts program with an excellent link on vocabulary and concept development. They suggest that students learn a variety of ways to acquire word meanings. The lesson plans on vocabulary for K-3 include instruction on nouns, pronouns, verbs, antonyms, synonyms, homophones, homographs, prefixes, and suffixes. Lesson plans for grades 4-6 focus on word origins, context clues, multiple meanings of words, and figurative and metaphorical use of words. There are even lessons for middle school students.
Rationale:
This site supports vocabulary
development and has great links for teachers, parents, and students. An expanded
vocabulary leads to to improved reading comprehension and this site offers
teacher sensible lesson plans on how to
teach vocabulary.
Title: Reading Rockets Multisensory Vocabulary Activities and Guidelines
Address: http://www.readingrockets.org/article.php?ID=399
Summary: This website offers alternative classroom activities for vocabulary study and practice to improve comprehension and retention.
Rationale: Research tells us that students tend to remember 90% of what they both say and do, and many of these activities offer that opportunity on a fun and relevant manner.
Title: WordMania
Address: http://web.jet.es/pamina/index.htm
Summary: This website has seven categories of games, Brainteasers, Crossword puzzles, Trivia, Hangman, Word Search, Riddles, and Kid’s Area. Each of the categories has varying degrees of difficulty from which the child can choose. The last game, Kid’s Area is specifically for younger children, pre-kindergarten, kindergarten, first grade, and possibly second grade. In addition to the games, there is a category, Kid’s Classics that give access to children’s classic literature books, which can be downloaded (WinZip is required to open them).
Rationale: This site is graphically pleasing, easy to navigate, and is interactive. This website could be used as a technological tool to assist in vocabulary enrichment. It would make an excellent center activity, or it could also be used as an incentive motive.
Title: Vocabulary Lesson Plans
Address: www.lessonplanspage.com
Summary: This website offers a great variety of lessons and activities involving reading/vocabulary as well as many others. It allows teachers to offer “fun” ways to teach students vocabulary. There are catchy games as well as ways to teach vocabulary using music/songs. It offers lessons on “word identification”, “words that start with “q”, and a game called “my word” which involves each student being assigned a word for the week, they research their word through the week, share with classmates, then all become familiar with many new words. This site is helpful for other subjects as well.
Rationale: In the area of vocabulary, this site offers catchy and interesting ways to teach reading/vocabulary. It offers information on other subjects as well.
Title: Bernie Poole’s EdIndex: A Web Resource for Teachers and Students
Address: www.pitt.edu/~poole/edmenu.html:
Summary: This website offers many vocabulary teaching ideas. Upon entering the website you are prompted to enter the grade level you are interested in by a drop down menu and “search” for your particular interest. In this instance it would be “language arts/vocabulary”. After entering this information, the website opens to many activities such as “building rhyme zone”or “teaching students reading and vocabulary through the internet”. No matter what area in which you are doing lesson planning, you can find useful information on this site.
Rationale: This website offers literally hundreds of ideas when you put in your “search” information. No manner the lesson or subject matter, you will probably find a great idea here. Another good thing about this site is that it is separated into grade level and subjects.
Title: The Learning Haven – Teaching Vocabulary
Address: www.learninghaven.com/la/vocabulary/teaching_vocabulary.htm
Summary: The reason I choose this website is it talks of the “word wall” and explains how this can be effective in the classroom. This website also encourages teachers to use the word on various subjects such as Math, Social Studies and Health. Spelling, Grammar, and Reading tips are also included in this site.
Rationale: It gives the students the opportunity to visits various content sites that deal with the above Language Arts while making it meaningful to them and also offers different approaches to learning through this website.
Title: Building a Better Vocabulary
Address: http://webster.commnet.edu/grammar/vocabulary.htm#
Summary: This website includes Greek and Latin root words, opposites, non-English words-matching game, prefixes, suffixes even breaking it down into noun suffixes, verb suffixes, adjective suffixes and adverb suffixes, puzzles, quizzes and games.
Rationale: This website explains how to build a better vocabulary and this affects all ages by making it personal and explaining how to use every resource available. It is interesting to note how we get some root words from the Greek and Latin and then how those are translated into English and this site gives the meaning for these words. It further delves into the prefixes and suffixes of words and gives a multitude of examples to better help us understand the meaning of certain words. Finally the quizzes on the last page can challenge the student or yourself in many ways from fill in the blanks, matching (even non-English matching) and antonyms.
Title: Edhelper
Address: www.edhelper.com
Summary: This website deals with various aspects of academics, but I just looked into the vocabulary exercise, which included pre-made lessons containing reproducible worksheets, definitions, word finds, crossword puzzles, matching, sentences, synonyms, multiple choice and scrambles. All lessons include 10 words, and offer lesson reviews as well. Teachers can also enter their on words to have lessons made to fit them.
Rationale: I found this website great, especially since teachers can use their own vocabulary words to quickly produce worksheets pertaining to them. Also this site was grade level specific, including grades 1-6 (as well as SAT prep), something I didn’t see on many other sites. In addition, I think it was wonderful that the website had a variety of activities to choose from, not limiting the teacher to one certain worksheet.
Title: Vocabulary University
Address: www.vocabulary.com
Summary: This website was broken into three levels; high elementary, middle school, and high school/college prep. It offered various vocabulary exercises such as fill in the blank, definitions, matching, synonym and antonym encounter, crosswords, true/false, and rootonym word puzzles, which is a crossword style puzzle in which the root of the word is already filled in with a definition to the side and the student must fill in the rest of the word.
Rationale: What I really liked about this site was that it is both teacher and students friendly. It offers students hints to not leave them frustrated and the variety is sure to not leave them bored. Many tips and ideas for teachers are offered as well. My favorite part of the site is that it also offers themed units, pertaining to themes such as various holidays, sports and my favorite, vocabulary words dealing with character education. Another great aspect of this site is that it has a section for vocabulary from 54 popular texts that many students read.