Vocabulary Activities (Upper Elementary)

Happy FRIDAY!
I hope your week went well. I still cannot believe we are nearly though January!
This week I wanted to share with you some vocabulary activities I use in my room. We use the vocabulary associated with our reading curriculum, although sometimes I change it out. I don't think the words matter so much as long as students are increasing the quantity of words they understand. However, I find some curriculum vocabulary to be extremely content specific and not as relevant to my students. For this reason, I like to exchange some of those with words I have noticed my students coming across frequently in reading and not understanding. Something I want to do even better with next year is student led vocabulary. I love the idea of students adding words to a box or poster when they come across words they don't know. From there, the class can pull their vocabulary words. Those kind of words would be perfect for the activities I want to talk about today.

First off, a vocabulary activity I use all year.
Vocabulary Sentence Scramble
 It takes a bit of prep but isn't hard and is so amazing. I got this idea from The Brown Bag Teacher and tweaked it to fit our needs. All you do is get some (preferably colored) sentence strips, a marker, and your vocabulary words. You will need to have a sentence for each word (if you're using curriculum words, there are probably some sentences there or even pull sentences from your story). Write out the sentences on the strip, leaving a blank for the vocabulary word. Then, cut the sentence strip apart word by word. Students work to unscramble the sentence and fill in the blank with the correct vocabulary word. This is always an option for my students at word work and they choose it often. They love the challenge and the puzzle aspect. At first, I would help them by including how many letters the vocabulary word had (instead of a _____ blank, I would put _ _ _ _, etc.) and include the capitalization and punctuation. Throughout the year, I take the help away and students must include the capitalization and punctuation in their recording sheet.

Each week, I create the new sentences, cut them up, throw them in baggies and load them in our word work tubs. Easy peasy. And don't worry if you don't have colored sentence strips (or run out, like I have). You can use a different colored marker for each sentence on white strips and students can separate them back in their baggies that way.

The next activity is another I've seen around the Internet, tweaked, and LOVE. 

Conversation Competition

This may be the easiest way to get your students using their vocabulary words in "conversation" I have seen yet. We did this activity today and all my students were abuzz using their words.

For this one, all you will need is a sheet of paper with the vocabulary words on it like this...

(our vocab words this week)

Put students into partners. Each partner will need one vocabulary sheet and a pencil. Then, have partners stand around the room. (disclaimer: this activity will need some modeling. I picked one of my "higher" vocabulary students to help me walk through the activity before I threw students out there). When you say go, students must take turns using the vocabulary words in a real life sentence (must make sense, try to be relevant and/or creative - make it fun!). When they've used the word, have students initial next to the word on their sheet (disclaimer 2: the first time my students did this, I told them to just checkmark but they lost track of which partner had done that word so initials are better). BOTH partners must use all the words in "conversation" (i.e. each word should have 2 initials). When they've finished (and this will inevitably take longer than they think) they sit. Keep track of the order partners sit. 

Call the first team that sat up to share out their sentences. The class must come to a consensus whether they used the words correctly or not. If they did, they can be the winner. I usually throw out some superlative awards after that. For example, I may say "today, I'm giving a most creative award" and pick a student that came up with a creative sentence. I also do funnies (but appropriate), longest, shortest, etc. But the trick is, the word must be used correctly, tense and all. 

As students get older or more adept, you can make it more challenging by requiring that it be an actual conversation. I found, however, that my 3rd graders weren't quite there yet and it was enough for me that they were using the words. 

How many times have you asked your kids to write sentences using their vocabulary words? Try this instead.

So, there are two of my favorite vocabulary activities for the upper elementary classroom. Vocabulary is so important and I am always searching for more ways to make it relevant and engaging. Share some of your favorite activities with me!

Happy teaching!