March 3, 2022
My first year of teaching, I quickly became bored with our weekly vocabulary routine.
Day 1: Teacher introduces the words for the week and students read the words in context during guided reading.
Day 2: Students complete a Frayer Model for each word.
Day 3: Students write sentences using each word in context.
Day 4: Students turn and share each sentence they wrote with a partner in a cloze activity (removing the vocabulary word from the sentence while their partner guesses which word from our weekly vocabulary list fits in the context of the sentence).
Day 5: Students complete a vocabulary test.
After months of this, our routine became monotonous. I decided if I was bored with the way we were learning vocabulary each week, my students probably were too. I also realized that by teaching them 7 - 10 words each week, they weren't really developing strong vocabulary skills. Instead of helping my students investigate, deconstruct and learn to love words, my focus had been on helping students memorize the specific words my curriculum told me to teach.
By December, students only remember 2 - 3 words from each word list we had studied that school year. Doing the math and being very generous with assumptions of what long term retention might look like, this meant students would learn anywhere from 76 -114 words by the end of the year and have few strategies for learning new words. While 114 words doesn't sound too shabby, I wasn't setting my students up for long term success.
After looking at the data and listening to my teacher voice, I made a change. We kept a routine, but I expanded my vocabulary activity repartee. From time to time, we still used the sentence writing and cloze activity students had become so familiar with, but that became just one of many activities in my vocabulary toolbox. We began by playing Charades and Pictionary. It wasn't long before I began creating my own vocabulary games, finding inspiration from game shows and board games.
These games not only made Thursdays more fun, but they influenced the vocabulary skill lesson I taught each Wednesday. We began discussing shades of meaning, word associations, deconstructing words, using synonyms and antonyms to understand words, and we would often debate how word choice impacted tone, mood, and what we knew about the character and setting of a story. As I result, I saw my students vocabulary skills skyrocket.
The games themselves were of course a blast, and by March students were running the games themselves. As we approached state testing, I knew I wanted to do something fun and engaging to review the vocabulary skills students had been developing. This is when the Vocabulary Olympics were born. Since students knew the games, had practiced the games, and gotten quite good at working on teams to play the games, I decided that facilitating a friendly competition was the perfect way to review. Students were assigned to teams for the Olympic Games (collaboration). They named their teams and after being given a list of Olympic Events, groups identified which team member would lead the team in each event.
Every student participated in every event, but team leads were the people to run to the board, read the answers aloud, hold the clipboard, move the vocabulary cards ... you get the idea.
Every students strength was recognized and utilized when they were identified as a team lead for a specific event and every student served as a team lead at some point during the games. Students had the opportunities to play games as both a leader and teammate over the course of our Vocabulary Olympics. The competition became fierce that first year, and every lunch recess students were abuzz with anticipation as they prepared for the next game. Teams were awarded certificates for earning gold, silver and bronze in each event, and we used a bulletin board to keep track of metals won by each team. As we neared the end of the games, we used data from the board in a few math lessons. We looked at trends, made comparisons, and constructed charts and graphs to represent our Vocabulary Olympic results.
Vocabulary Olympics have become an annual event in my classroom. Each year I add something new; a new event, opening ceremonies, team flags ... but one thing that never changes is the level of engagement. Students can't get enough of the collaboration and competition and they love the opportunity to demonstrate their vocabulary skills.
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