Vocabulary is coming ALIVE!!

As a first grade teacher, writing is an area that is under constant construction. We work from the very basic writing at the beginning of the year to creative writing at the end of the year. I chose to work on writing across the curriculum using content vocabulary. I wanted to see if the students were actually being held accountable of writing, drawing, and using vocabulary words in sentences would actually make the children stronger writers. I want to know if the writing has more meaning to the reader and writer if there are specific words relating to the content being taught.

We are always so focused on sentence structure in first grade that I feel like meaningful writing with a purpose sometimes gets shuffled to the back burner. I decided that for my science, social studies, and reading lessons I would provide the children with key vocabulary that I will expect them to write with at the end of the study. Of course we always intro vocab and use those specific words while teaching a specific content area. I wanted to see if having the kids write the words down and draw a picture of the vocabulary words would actually help them not only to retain the info, but also be capable of using the words in their writing.

So far in this journey of writing with vocabulary I am very pleased by what I am seeing. The kids are getting excited to write and draw their words and then use them in their writing. The format of the paper is sort of open ended. You could just use the specific words in sentences that are not related to one another or you could use it as a responsive type writing and sort of correlate everything learned including new vocab all together. I think the kids prefer to do the writing this way. I am noticing that the kids are actually looking to their paper on how to spell the words. I also noticed with my tooth study, the kids were really using some of the key vocabulary in their journal writing as well. It was so cool!!

What is most exciting is that some of my low or non writers are now writing more. Even if they just end up writing one sentence using one or two of the vocabulary words, I am seeing success because they are understanding that these words have a purpose in the sentence. Then I am seeing my higher students who are just going crazy with their writing wanting to tell me ALL they learned on the specific subject using the content vocabulary. I even had one student ask me, "Is is okay if we go back into our writing and circle the vocabulary words so you can see we used them and we can see which ones we still need to use?" So awesome!!

I am enjoying being on break, but am looking forward to really diving into using the specific vocabulary from the reading series stories when I get back. See you guys next Weds. at my house! I can't wait to see you all!