My school set reading comprehension as our academic focus areas this year, and I was tasked with introducing some reading comprehension strategies to my colleagues they might use with their students. I immediately thought of Marzano's vocabulary process as a painless introductory strategy. Nothing is more frustrating than a student's lack of comprehension or success because he or she doesn't understand the question or the prompt. As a former French teacher, I had already amassed an arsenal of fun vocabulary activities, so sharing was easy! Here's the introduction I offered my colleagues, with plenty of digital resources for our 1:1 Chromebooks!
Marzano’s Six-Step Vocabulary Process
(note--it’s important to do ALL SIX steps!)
1. Provide a description, explanation, or example of the new term.
- Looking up words in dictionaries is not the most useful way to learn vocab
- Provide a context for the term
- Introduce direct experiences that provide examples of the term
- Tell a story that integrates the term
- Use video to aid in processing and internalizing meaning
- Describe your own mental picture of the term
- Find or create pictures that explain the term
2. Ask students to restate the description, explanation, or example in their own words.
- Monitor and correct misunderstandings
- Important that STUDENTS create this understanding rather than copying teacher or book models
3. Ask students to construct a picture, symbol, or graphic representing the word.
- Model, model, model--even if you're not the best artist!
- Provide examples of student’s drawings (and your own) that aren't perfect--maybe even attempt to improve upon them!
- Play “Pictionary”
- Make a comic, by hand or online with a tool like Pixton or makebeliefscomix
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| We like to do steps 2+3 on our dry erase painted desks! We use our Chromebooks to snap quick pictures of them and compile them on Google Slides presentations. |
4. Engage students periodically in activities that help them add to their knowledge of the terms.
- Highlight prefixes, suffixes, root words to aid in decoding and memory
- Identify synonyms and antonyms for the term
- List related/unrelated words
- Translate the term into another language for second language students
- Write incomplete analogies for students to complete
- Allow students to write (or draw) their own analogies (Connect Two Example)
- Sort or classify words
5. Periodically ask students to discuss the terms with one another.Think-Pair-Share
- Yes-No-Why (Example)
- Compare their descriptions of the term
- Describe their pictures to one another
- Students share their own connections or mnemonic devices
- Explain to each other any new information they have learned (Aha Moments)
- Identify areas of disagreement or confusion and seek clarification
- Allow students to revise their own work
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My students love to play Kahoot!
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6. Involve students periodically in games to play with, recycle, and review terms.
- That’s Sketchy (Pictionary)
- Puzzles
- Vocabulary Baseball (Teacher predetermines single, double, triple, and home run words, bonus if students actually "run" the bases!)
- Memory (time students, beat themselves or each other)
- Jeopardy (vocab words are on the board, players make up a question to define)
- Charades
- Vocabulary Battleship
- Name the Category ($100,000 Pyramid)
- Password
- Catch Phrase
- Bingo (teacher gives definition, students mark the words)
- Create a skit (assign groups of 3-4 kids 3 vocab words include in a skit)
- Flyswatter Game (show images representing the words or the words themselves all on 1 image, kids on 2 teams compete to find words first when teacher reads the definition and swat with fly-swatter)
- Arcade style games
- Pac Man Game
- Kahoot
- Socrative Space Race
What would you add to the list? I'd love to hear your fun vocabulary games and activities that have proven successful with students!
