Vocabulary Building

Ideas for Vocabulary Building

Goal

To learn vocabulary at the end of a chapter, before a test, when introducing vocabulary, previewing, reviewing, or studying.

The idea is to look at three different ways to teach students study skills while having them learn the content vocabulary.

Level could be all, it just depends on the student's technical aptitude.

Types

Flash Cards

Flash cards are tried and true, so how does technology improve it? Well. Very well. You can add media, share, and use premade programs to play games, review, drill, spell the words you want to learn.

Quizlet

Example of the whole flash card set.

Drillster

Drillster is a little bit more intense. Better maybe for those machines who want to study TOEFL or GRE.

The example is an Educational Psychology flash card set. It can have media as well as multiple columns for definitions.

Mind Map

Connect the words in sentences. Really useful for a set of words that have a shared theme. Really illustrates the point that a word is not used in a singular fashion.

Popplet 

...is cool. It is a mind map that is really easy to use. You can have multiple people working on it too.  

This is an example that was done with the whole class. Notice how all the words weren't used but could have been. It was fun being able to move things around and connect it.

Prezi-Typically a presentation tool (blogged about it here), but it could easily become a mind map as well.

An in Depth Look

Go into more detail on those really difficult words. Take a look at the definition, translation (depends on your view of the use of translations obviously), synonyms, antonyms, the root and the derivatives from the roots, an example sentence, and a picture.

Presentation tool/ Word Processor (Google docs, Zoho, PowerPoint, Word, Open Office, etc.)
Example

Popplet
Example



Prezi could also be used for this as well. An added advantage might be a video embedded as well.

How to Use

Hopefully a lot of these are self explanatory but here are two ways:

One is to assign it as a project. This way you don't necessarily need a class with a computer or whatever. Have students bring in a copy or their computer to share with other students as partners. It can be assigned individually or let them choose their favorite method.

Another way is to build it together as a class. Have the students make the pieces of the parts individually and then as a class come together and build one set.  This is good as a precursor to an individual project because you are giving the scaffolding to do the project individually later.

If you come up with any other uses or programs, please share!