Vocabulary Book Lists

Vocabulary:
Make a word maps, pick a word then ask for a synonym, antonym, example, and non-example.

Books
The king who rained
by Fred Gwen
Baby Buggy Buggy Baby
Harriet Z
(compound words) Once there was a bull...frog
rick walton
Baloney (henry P.)
Jon Scheszka Play with words, asks kids to pay attention
C D B!
William Steig
Miss Alaineus: a vocabulary disaster
Debra Frasier

Word Jars Books
Cowboy Christmas
Owl moon

Make a jar for "like" or "good" have kids put words like "tremendous" or other synonyms then kids can come pull words from the jar to use in their writing.

As we are reading to students stop and say "look at that word, we can't forget that word" then write it down on the board for use later.

Compare how the author wrote something descriptive to a simple way to write something

Adjectives:
have students write about their moms then take out all the adjectives and say they all look alike. then students can see the power of adjectives. Try reading the Clifford the Big Red Dog without adjectives

Verbs:
Wiggle words. Look at words that move, then send the kids to recess with homework to come back with wiggle words they did at recess. to generate a whole new list of verbs "fought" "threw" "cried"

Lon Po Po

Lon Po Po (Chinese little red riding hood)

"The brain is not a rule follower...."

"The brain is not a rule follower, it is a pattern detector"
Patricia Cuningham

Alphabet Books

• Bembo's Zoo: All the letters of the animal name to make an animal.
• The absolutely awful alphabet
• A is for....?
• Jambo Means Hello?The swahili Alphabet book
• Caldecott (for Illustrations)
• Ashanti to Zulu
• Read anything good lately?
• The Graphic Alphabet
• The Extinct Alphabet
• Fly With Poetry (an abc of poetry)
• Autumn (an alphabet acrostic)
• There's a Zoo in Room 22 (phonemic awareness alphabet)
• Alphabet City (would be really fun to do a photography art unit with)

Getting Ready for Phonics

1. Language Readiness: being read to and talking about reading
2. Visual Readiness: Learning to recognize similarities and differences in shapes and colors help to talk about letters
3. Auditory Readiness similarities and differences in sounds like rhyming
4. Manual Readiness: Phonics is spelling instruction ability to write words makes a difference

Sight Word Activities

Word Walls
High Frequency Words that students just need to know: like "The"
Ideas for teaching "the" to students struggling to remember:

• Illustrate the word "the"
• put it on the wall
• Rainbow write it, use favorite colors to trace the letters

109 words are 50% of our text
important because off the bat they know how to read most of text
i.e.--the, because

Word Wall

• Word walls should be in alphabetic order

• Star next to word with a star is a word that you can transfer to another word the word "like" Teach high frequency words with phonics focus on pattern then students can refer to the word wall to help match new words to familiar sounds. For instance the word like on the wall might help a student spell hike.

• "Is there a word on the wall that would help you spell hike?"
• Make a word wall in the beginning of their names and then start adding high frequency words
• Use 5 words a week, a word a day for 1st grade
  
• Once a word is on the word wall the students need to spell it correctly

In this way reading, writing, spelling are integrated. At the same time as Phonics, whole language helps attack from two angles at the same time as working on sounds and spelling


Secret word of the day: always in plain sight, couldn't tell when they found it
tape the new word to the ceiling, on a orange paper on the rug
"Has anybody found the secret word? Point to the word?"
Ask them to read the word to get out to recess, start with students that know the word
use the word frequently

Clapping and Chanting
Revisit the word later by clapping and chanting
clap each letter "b" "e" "c" "a" "u" "s" "e" repeat three or five times
then have the students write it.