Today a reader,
Tomorrow a leader.
by W. Fusselman |
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Words, Words, and More Words |
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Simply put, vocabulary means all of
the words we know.
We use these words to communicate. The New York State
Education Department delineated the ELA learning standards into four
areas.
They are reading, writing, listening, and speaking. |
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The Four Types of Vocabulary |
Listening
Development of our listening vocabulary
begins from the time we are born. These
are the words we hear day in and
day out.
They are the words we need to know to
understand others. |
Speaking
Development of our speaking vocabulary
begins from the time we are born. These are
the words we learn through listening and
modeling others. They are the words we use
to communicate with others. |
Reading
Our reading vocabulary are the words we
see in print when we read
anything. In order
to understand what we read we must know
the vocabulary
words that we are reading. |
Writing
Our writing vocabulary are the words that
we use when we write, be it
creative writing,
letter writing, or
essay writing. Writing can
take many forms. |
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Did You Know... |
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"The National Research
Council recently concluded that vocabulary
development is a fundamental goal for students in the early grades." (Click for Reference)
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"An average student in grades
3 through 12 is likely to learn approximately 3,000 new vocabulary words
each year, assuming he or she reads between 500,000 and a million running
words of text a school year." (Click for Reference)
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"Research has shown that children
who read even ten minutes a day outside of school experience substantially
higher rates of vocabulary growth between second and fifth grade than
children who do little or no reading." (Click for Reference)
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"By the time the children
were 3 years old, parents in less economically favored circumstances had
said fewer different words in their cumulative monthly vocabularies than
the children in the most economically advantaged families in the same
period of time." (Click
for Reference)
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Ways to develop vocabulary |
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Read aloud to your children
frequently. Children learn new words from hearing stories and
being involved in discussion about the words they hear.
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Discuss what you are reading
before, during, and after the story to explain new words.
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Connect new words to what the
children already know.
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Be sure your children read
often.
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Provide direct, explicit
instruction on words that are important to story meaning, and
words that children are likely to come in contact with again and
again.
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Teach children how to use the
dictionary and thesaurus.
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Use synonyms to relay the
meaning of a new word.
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Encourage children to use a
newly learned word in daily conversation, as well as in their
writing.
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Teach children how to use
context clues (how the word is used in a sentence or paragraph) to
figure out the meaning of words.
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Call attention to words that
may have more than one meaning.
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Teach how prefixes and suffixes
can alter the meaning of a base word. |
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Vocabulary
Games |
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Learning
Vocabulary Can be Fun!
This educational, fun site is easy to use. It
contains links to games such as Hangman, crosswords, word searches,
quizzes, and matching games to develop vocabulary. |
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Fake Out
This
Houghton-Mifflin site contains vocabulary activities for children in
grades K-8. |
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What's the Word?
This vocabulary game by Funbrain.com shows the
children a picture and they have to click on the word that best
describes the picture. Immediate feedback is given whether the answer
is correct or incorrect. If an incorrect answer is chosen the correct
answer is displayed. |
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Vocabulary
Pinball
This
site by Play Kids Games.com is designed by parents of young children. The
goal of the site is to provide a web site where parents can find fun
games to help their children learn basic skills. First through fourth
grade words are available. There is a link for teachers where they can
develop their own pinball game using classroom vocabulary. |
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English
Vocabulary Games with Pictures
There
are 9 sets of words with 7 games for each set. All of the games use words
along with pictures. These are particularly useful for ESL children. |
Vocabulary Drill for Kids
These
games are designed for children in grades K-12. Children are given a
sentence and are provided with 3 possible selections for the word in
boldface print in the sentence. Students receive immediate feedback. If
their answer is incorrect they are given the correct answer. |
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Dog's Word Games
Find a
wide variety of word games to play, ranging from
anagrams, to crossword puzzles, to word jumbles, and much, much more.
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Houghton-Mifflin
Vocabulary
These are worksheets for grades 1-5. |
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Houghton-Mifflin
Spelling and Vocabulary
Choose a level from 1 to 8 and find many
word and vocabulary activities. They range from word finds, letter and word cards, and word puzzles.
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Word
Find
This
Houghton-Mifflin site contains vocabulary and spelling practice for grades
1-8. |
Fish Tanks 1
Fill a tank with tropical fish using
prefixes, roots, and suffixes. |
Fish Tanks 2
Fill a tank with tropical fish using
your knowledge of plurals. |
Synonym Challenge
Try to identify the correct synonyms in a race
against time.
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Future City
Build a city of the future by
classifying words in a series. |
Antonym Challenge
Try to identify the correct antonyms in a race
against time.
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Analogy Challenge
Try to complete the analogies in a
race against time. |
Sadlier-Oxford
Vocabulary Workshop
This sites provides a wide array of
vocabulary activities, including hidden word, matching, and crossword
puzzles. |
Dino Hunters
Find all the different dinosaurs using dictionary. |
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Online
Dictionaries |
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Oswego City School
District's Test Prep Center |
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Visit Beginning Reading
to learn more! |
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