Vocabulary review

With a 2-day week ahead (WOO HOO!), I hesitate to start new projects so we'll be doing assessments and playing vocabulary review card games.

The card games are basic memory games - spread out the cards face down, turn over 2 cards at a time to find a match.

I use Avery labels to print out words and definitions for the upper grade students. The K-2 student cards rely more on examples of color, shape or line along with matching words.

It's amazing how the vocabulary just flows out during the game! I have a set for each table group to use.

The labels are placed on recycled printed cardstock I bought by the sack-load at Treasures 4 Teachers...about time for another drive over there since I'm running low on supplies now that I have 7 sets featuring mola/shape, landscape and color vocab for the current projects.

Art Vocabulary Games

My brain is pretty much fried after 3 days of classes on incorporating more vocab into our lessons. We have been busy building our vocab lists based on our state standards and pacing guides...

Today was entertaining though, because we learned some new word games - Save the Pig looks interesting & fun - a PC version of hangman...

Draw a pig, then the blanks for the word's letters. Kids name a letter - if correct it goes on a blank & they get to guess the vocab word. If incorrect, erase a part of the pig hence the name "Save the Pig!!!"

Vocabulary Games & Closure Ideas

As a staff, we received a new book to develop the vocabulary of our students through games. The book is called Vocabulary Games for the Classroom by Lindsay Carleton and Robert J. Marzano.

So the MAP teachers (Music and Band, Art and PE) brainstormed during one of our collaboration meetings to come up with a vocabulary game from the many listed in the book that we could put to use in our classroom right away.

Jo (traveling art teacher) and I came up with question cards that are used at the end of our classes to review new vocabulary about materials, concepts or techniques.

We write out the Q's on index cards & keep them handy for the end of class.

You know my obsession with color sorting so each grade level has its own color for the cards.

When the table group has cleaned up their space, is quiet & waiting to be called to line up, their group gets a question from me. Answer correctly - line up! Answer incorrectly - wait for your next question AFTER every other table gets a question. So far, the kids are really into it - kinda like a mini-jeopardy game...

As the project develops, more questions/vocab words will be added. I'm hoping that over time, students will become more familiar with the new vocabulary which should lead to more frequent correct usage.