A Simple Way to Play with Words

PicLits.com is a fun and simple website that can be a wonderful resource and tool for teachers to use with their students to enable them to not only play with words but increase their vocabulary. "Inspired Picture Writing" is what it calls its goal. Students can choose from many intriguing and beautiful pictures and then use words to create sentences, poetry, or just descriptive writings. Here is an example of a quick PicLit that I made,

See the full PicLit at PicLits.com

After choosing a picture, students can drag and drop words onto it to create a mini-poster. Words can be chosen from a preselected list of words that are arranged into categories of nouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives, or universal words. Many of the word choices for each picture are unique to that picture and are wonderful vocabulary words. Students can create their own work through their own choices and they do not have to type the words so their is more time to play and arrange the words in different ways.

There is also a freestyle choice where you can just type and create your own writing. The website also offers mini-lessons. "Write It" gives you tips on basic uses of words, writing simple captions, compound sentences, and writing paragraphs. "Rhyme It" gives some advice on writing raps, writing similes, and poetry writing. "Master It' has more advanced lesson plans.

This is a fun site for all people to try. I see many and various uses for it in a classroom and I think that it will definitely stimulate creativity and expression as well as captivate your student's attention. The pictures can be saved, shared, and e-mailed.

A Simple and Fun Way to Teach Vocabulary

I love to teach vocabulary in my classroom. I know my students enjoy learning and using interesting words. I use the Elements of Reading vocabulary program that was developed by Isabel Beck with great success.

Here is another website that has a word story for every day of the year and introduces students to interesting words, usages, and etymology. The Year of Vocabulary-Just for the Kids website is from Susan Ohanian, the author of "The Great Word Catalogue".

Vocabulary Development and Twirling Fingers

This year at Mount Pleasant School there has been a major emphasis on improving vocabulary instruction. I have likewise made vocabulary development one of the key efforts in my own classroom. The idea for reinventing the way we teach vocabulary began when the teachers had meetings discussing Isabel Beck's "Bringing Words to Life" a couple of years ago. This summer many teachers met at Barnes and Noble a few times to talk about how we could teach vocabulary, and thus improve reading, in new and inventive ways.

One personal goal I set was to use pictures to introduce words to my class. I try to find 8-12 vocabulary words in each Scott-Foresman story (these usually are not the words Scott-Foresman chooses) and find a picture or a few pictures that illustrate each word. Of course the words are often chosen because my students may never have seen some of words. For example in the story "Train to Somewhere" I chose words like a railroad "platform", a "trunk" for carrying clothes, "tenement" buildings, "dimples", "locomotive" and other words that a picture can help illustrate . A picture is worth a thousand words is true as students easiliy grasp the meaning when they can see a picture. I would then go over each word and show the picture and hang the pictures and labeled vocabulary word on the wall for constant reference. The children enjoyed "seeing" the words and learning them. When it came time to read the selection they would have a good knowledge of each word and it would help them read and understand a passage.

I noticed my students enjoyed finding the words in the selection as they read and that they liked to tell me when they found a word. I wanted to to come up with a way for them to signify that they found the word and yet not distract the flow of a reading or the lesson. One day I decided, at the spur of the moment, that when they recognized any word that I had taught them from any lesson that they could raise their index finger and twirl it around a few times. The students seemed to like doing this and all of a sudden this little "cue" took off. When anyone mentioned a word or saw a word in their reading fingers would go up in the air and start twirling around.

Their little helicopter fingers have become quite a habit. Fingers go twirling all day long. I like to see their enthusiasm and it is simple way to show that they keep connecting with a lesson. Of course, I am used to this activity, however the other week it unnerved a substitute teacher. She didn't know why the class kept twirling their fingers in the middle of a lesson. I think this habit is fairly well-ingrained with my class so I wonder what the fifth grade teachers will do when it starts happening in their classes next year?

Maybe we will have an end of year finger twirling contest and get it out of our systems. We could set it to music and dress up like this guy and just point those fingers with enthusiasm and twirl away!