Wonderful Words

Over the summer, we took a class called Kentucky Reading Project.  What a great two weeks!  The class was so informative and gave us so many awesome and practical ideas.  A part of the class was writing a Literacy Action Plan based on our school’s test scores.  We’ll meet with our cohort a couple times throughout the year and share our projects with teachers from throughout the state in March.

Our plan was all about building vocabulary.  We already teach a systematic phonics program, and we are working on writing.  But our kids seem to struggle with vocabulary.  One project that we are hoping will help build their word banks is our “Wonderful Words!” wall.  The bulletin board is in the first grade hallway, and we are hoping to get all seven first grade teachers involved.  A couple times each week, we will decide on a theme (i.e. school supply words, animal words, sports words, anything goes!).  Each teacher will wear a word on her back on a certain day.  For example, if the theme is school supplies, we will each wear a word like pencil, scissors, eraser, etc.  Of course, many of these words are already posted in our rooms.  Initially, we want the students to practice reading our own rooms and transferring that information to other places.  Later, we’ll get into various themes and content areas.  The idea is that when we study animals, for example, students might be able to read and define “bird” but not cardinal, robin or blue jay.  Then the first student, whether from our own classroom or not, to correctly read and define the word will be able to illustrate it.  Then we will collect all the words, pass them from room to room and eventually display them on the wall.

We are still brainstorming ideas for reviewing and properly practicing the words after they are posted . . .

Update: Here are the first two sets of words.  So far, the students are really into "Wonderful Words Wednesday" and they work hard to read as many teachers' words as possible!