Components of My Vocabulary Instruction
I implemented a version the cafe system for vocabulary development. I taught in a school where many students’ first language was not English, so vocabulary was an important focus. Every week we would learn a prefix, suffix, or root for the week and the students would then search for words using that prefix, suffix, or root in their independent reading. Once they had found five, they would show me the words and explain how they can use the meeting of the word parts to determine the meaning of the word. We also had an idiom of the week, which the students would record and draw pictures for in their reading reference notebooks.
Beside the aforementioned additions, most of our vocabulary work revolved around our word collectors. I had a class word collector. Whenever we read a text together, students could suggest interesting words for our class word collector, which was displayed on the wall of the classroom. Each student also had an individual word collector on which he or she could collect interesting words from his or her independent reading or anywhere else interesting words were found (even in other subjects). At least once a month, the students would create a word picture to demonstrate the meaning of a favorite new word and make a choice off of the vocabulary choice menu.
Examples of Student Word Pictures
