Vocabulary Development Supporting Social Studies Vocabulary in the LA Classroom

Self select a nonfiction book  Social studies theme: Lewis and Clark Expedition  Students choose from a variety of themed books written at different instructional reading levels

Nonfiction and Doubled-Sided Journal Entries  Students select a nonfiction book.  Students complete double-sided journal entries.  Students collect vocabulary words.  Students write a nonfiction quatrain.

Double-sided Journal Entry  Each student reads then completes double-sided journal entries on a daily basis.  Students write quotes from the book, and for each quote they write a response.  Response choices are connections (world, text and personal), questions, and summaries.

Student working on a double- sided journal entry

Word Collections  As students read, they collect strong, colorful, sparkling and jazzy words.  They collect words that they like, don’t understand, think sound or look funny, create a sensory image or spark a memory.  Later these words are used to write a quatrain.

Personal Word Banks  Daily the students self- select one or two words they don’t understand from their word collection and place them in their word bank.  Here the students examine the words in context, predict their meanings then locate the words in the dictionary making sure the selected definition matches the context in which the word was used.

Personal Word Bank Book Title_________________________________  Word/page# Sentence What you think the word means Dictionary definition  wilderness Jefferson wassomething wildland in its wild natural p.11 spending too much forstate a piece of land.  frontier They set in front of somethingthe area on the edge of p.12 out from thesettled region frontier city …

More on Personal Word Banks  Once a week, we share the words we’ve collected.  We record them and discuss them.  We use what we know about roots and affixes to figure out meanings.  Definitions are shared.  We choose four or five words to use in our classroom conversations the next week.

Quatrain  The students write a rhyming quatrain containing facts from the double- sided journal entries and words from the word collections.

Word Collections and Personal Word Banks  Words from each student’s word collection are used in the body of the poem.  The students are encouraged to use words from their personal word bank in their quatrain.

Quatrain Thomas Jefferson bought the Louisiana Territory from France, the Americans got such a great deal they smiled and danced. Jefferson sent an expedition led by two brave men who studied the Native Americans and then became friends. Lewis and Clark trekked into unfamiliar territory, described many plants and animals and got lots of glory. The Teton Souix were not so friendly with the explorers, Lewis and Clark were only following Jefferson’s orders.

Personal Response System  PRS technology allows the teacher to integrate a power point presentation in an interactive format.  Students are engaged as they view individual immediate feedback, relative to the class responses.

The Declaration of Independence  1.the freedom from control  2.the document that said the colonies were free from British rule  3.a war against your own government  4.the money the people must pay to a government

Personal Response System  The teacher creates a power point presentation.  The students read each question and multiple choice answer.  Each student selects a response.  The class is provided immediate feedback for each question.  This activity can be used as an introduction or review.