Friday, August 9, 2013

Vocabulary Ideas and Notebooking

After attending the Mickelson Exxon Mobil Teacher's Academy last summer and numerous professional developments since then, the messages of the importance of academic vocabulary and students needing to notebook was obvious in almost every single one.  Here are some great examples of notebooking with students.

Vocabulary:

This would be great for power words at our school and encouraging students to use academic vocabulary.  You could keep a running total on the board.

This foldable is great for prefixes & suffixes.  You can stress how the affixes change the meaning of the word.


This bulletin board is cute, but I would modify it to be "roots" since Greek & Latin roots are explicitly stated for upper elementary in the Common Core State Standards.  


This is a cute idea for decomposing words.  Students could cut the words apart and sort them as partners. They could also practice blending multisyllabic words when they reconstruct the words.  Additionally, they could notebook about how affixes and roots work together.

This idea I'm pretty sure is mentioned in the CORE Sourcebook (a must have!) as a strategy to help students synthesize information.  It's great for literature and informational text.

Another great idea with post-its:

Here is a great example of notebooking for primary students:

This foldable is great for a language mini-lesson, especially for English language learners!


Here is a great way to teach "shades of meaning" with academic language:

Gluing a ribbon to the inside back cover of notebooks will serve as a bookmark and help students quickly get back to their last page.

I like that this anchor chart has pictures to help clarify meaning for students.

Here's a great visual for notebooks:


I like that it places equal importance on teacher and student contributions.  The point of notebooking is for students to make meaning of what they're learning and track their educational journey. 

Notebooks aren't for teachers.  They are for students to take ownership of their own learning.

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