“Have a Delectable Lunch!” Fancy Vocabulary Activities
“Have a delectable lunch!” is what you would hear these days if you stood at the entrance of the cafeteria while my first graders headed into lunch. While we focus on vocabulary instruction all year in my room, during the last half of the year they really seem to take ownership for their vocabulary development! They learn how confident they are as readers and writers, and suddenly using the “fancy words” that we have been learning all year is FUN and “super cool.”
We’ve had a lot of fun reading lots and lots of Fancy Nancy books over the past few weeks.
As we read, we post these new words onto our anchor chart.
(Ahhh-mazing props to our stupendous kindergarten teacher who was sweet enough to draw Fancy Nancy for this artistically weak first grade teacher! 😉 Thank you so much, Mr. B!
As I read, I stop every couple of pages and the students discuss new and exciting words they hear. I read the sentences around the word and draw attention to the illustrations for them. Our goal for the read alouds? Context Clues! We discuss the word’s context clues and I give an example of the word’s meaning by sharing a quick scenario or story with the students. I want to model how the word is used both within the context of the story and give examples of how they might use the word within their everyday lives.
Our Fancy Vocabulary parade will be held next week, and we cannot wait! You can read about my annual vocabulary parade HERE and grab a free packet for your parade while you’re there! The packet in that post contains a word list, parent list, reminder cards, and explanation page to start your own annual parade! 🙂
We also continuously add to our Fancy Vocabulary wall, which is actually posted on my back cabinets. I have a bunch of colorful stars pre-cut. As the year progresses and my students start to take on ownership of words like “dapper,” “frustrated,” and “intelligent,” we add the stars to our board.
Our Fancy Word Wall keeps expanding! (That’s fancy for getting bigger!)
We also created those good ol’ Synonym Rolls as we learned about synonyms and antonyms! I WAS planning on putting these Synonym Rolls onto a foil “cookie sheet” and hanging it in the hallway. However….I failed. You see, this thing called “The Month of May” happened. It came out of nowhere, I swear! All of a sudden, I woke up and it was May 4th already. Between a million emails a day that are packed with due dates, special events, theme days, and end of year reminders…..the cookie sheet did not end up in the hallway.
#hallwaydisplayfailure
Imagine the cuteness, people.
Go ahead – practice your visualization skills.
😉
That’s it for our recent vocabulary activities! I’ll be back next week with another blog post about the big Vocabulary Party we are planning in my room – and a fun freebie for you that will be the perfect little game to play at the end of the year!
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One Comment
OH MY GOODNESS could this be any more adorable?? I love this idea and I can not wait to use it!!
OH MY GOODNESS could this be any more adorable?? I love this idea and I can not wait to use it!!