Vocab activities for your classroom
Sorting it Out: Word Sorts for Secondary School Students
Many secondary school teachers may be dismissive about using manipulatives in the classroom. They may think of word cards and word puzzles as belonging in the elementary school realm, along with crayons and counting cubes. However, when it comes to vocabulary learning, it can sometimes be a more engaging way to teach words as individual manipulative units rather than lists of tiny words printed out on 8 ½ x 11 sheets of paper. After all, why do so many adults have fridge doors covered in magnetic poetry?
Common activities for reviewing words in the elementary school classroom are word sorts and concept sorts—where children work in small groups to literally sort a small stack of word cards into different categories according to phonemic similarities (e.g., all the "short vowel" words in one pile, all the "long vowel" words in another) or according to meaning (e.g., all the reptiles in one pile, all the mammals in another).
In Vocabulary Their Way: Word Study with Middle and Secondary Students, veteran literacy professors Templeton, Bear, Invernizzi and Johnston suggest that manipulative engagement with vocabulary need not end with graduation from fifth grade. Middle school and high school students can also benefit from grade-appropriate word sorts and concept sorts, and these activities can be used effectively across diverse content areas.
For example, one word sort outlined in Vocabulary Their Way (pp. 105-106) focuses on the Greek roots crat/cracy (meaning "rule/government") and arch/archy (meaning "rule"). Students can work in pairs or small groups to sort a shuffled stack of word cards of terms ending with this set of Greek roots (see below), and then discuss what each column of words shares in common in regard to part of speech or usage and how each word has a distinct meaning within that group. Students could use Visual Thesaurus or another dictionary to help them define each word in the sort and then make generalizations based on their research. Which words (or columns of words) represent individual people or rulers? Which words or columns of words represent forms of rule or government? What examples of rulers or governments that they have studied in class could be labeled with each term?
-cracy -crat -archy -arch autocracy autocrat monarchy monarch democracy democrat oligarchy oligarch plutocracy plutocrat anarchy anarchist aristocracy aristocrat hierarchy hierarchial bureaucracy bureaucrat matriarchy matriarch technocracy technocrat patriarchy patriarch
Vocabulary Their Way: Word Study with Middle and Secondary Students (p. 106)
As an example of a secondary school concept sort appropriate for an earth science class, Vocabulary Their Way references teacher Amy Harway's concept sort that asks students to analyze each word to decide if it belongs in the "Producers" category or in the "Consumers" category. Instead of looking at word structure as an initial means of sorting, students must consider meaning first (i.e., autotrophs and photosynthesis categorized as "producers" while heterotrophs and herbivores are categorized as "consumers").
Of course these same exercises could be completed with fill-in-the-blank worksheets with labeled columns and blank lines for the students to fill with words from a printed list, but using manipulative word cards lends itself to more interactive group collaboration and discussion. And besides, sometimes even older learners need to abandon their heavy textbooks for the more playful stuff of the elementary school classrooms they have left behind.