Vocabulary has had the strongest influence on my classroom practices to date. 30-50% of my students each year are english language learners. As educators we are all aware of the need to increase ELL student's vocabulary in english and the need to help these students gain background knowledge that will aid in their comprehension. I began using a new chart and a few new activities 2 years ago after a conference I attended and hadn't realized how much of a rut I had gotten into with these few activities until I heard so many great suggestions. My second graders have begun to write their vocabulary words in sentences, make foldables that allow them to draw a picture and write their own definition or sentence for the word that they could use as a study guide, and also to play a giant game of matching. In the matching game, students are given a word, a picture/instructions to act something out, or a definition on a card. Once everyone has a card, students then move around the room until the find the matches for their card. While some of my students are still struggling with the cloze assessments and the ability to read and answer the vocabulary related questions, they are able to show me in other ways that they comprehend the vocabulary words. This has allowed met to use different types of assessment to show a more accurate picture of my student's learning.
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Hey Rachel,
ReplyDeleteIt is interesting to hear your strategies with ELL's. I have a similar problem, except I am going to be teaching German. I will use many of the vocabulary strategies for ELL's, but in reverse! I taught a vocab lesson today where we labeled the classroom in German. I like the matching game you described and I might steal that for my next vocab lesson.