Word of the Day

I love reading and vocabulary increasing activities. I took a wonderful workshop by Dr. Diane Wormsley whose techniques I have modified depending on how my students learn. Fortunately, at this school, the principal was on board with "Word Walls" so this idea tied right in with what I enjoy and believe children can accomplish if challenged and given the opportunity. At the beginning of the school year a word for the day was announced over the school PA system--so that was the source for some of the words.

This photo show my "Word Door." Each day as the children wrote their morning journals, I would find a word on the New York Times learning site, Merriam-Webster.com or the Superkids Learning site. Some of the words had to do with our studies and some did not. After a while, the children would come with their own words for which they wanted to know meanings. Yeah! We wanna know some footlong words! I would get the definition and we would discuss that, it's part of speech and how the word could be used.Then they would include the word, it's definition and their sentences using the word in their journal.

I would make a card in large print with braille on top with the new word, it's definition and one of their sentences. The children would take turns posting the new word cards on the door.

What happens when the door is full of cards? Well, I'm so glad you asked! One of our WOD words was archive. So we made a big manila envelope and labeled it with one of the cards. We taped the archive to the door as well. When the door gets too full of words we put them in the archive! The kids loved to check the wall and the archive for fun.

The children were from eight to ten years old and were all braille readers.Their reading levels were from primer braille to third grade. It didn't matter if they could spell the new word but often they felt compelled to learn their word. Even if they could not spell the WOD they used them quite often.

The WOD often leads to other learning moments. For instance, the only boy in the class said, "I always wanted to know what opera meant. Can that be the Word of the Day?" After we found the Merriam-Webster definition, I popped my favorite Andrea Bocelli CD into my computer and our morning music movement was to one of Andrea's songs. That became a brief lesson on Andrea's life and a full day of the kids singing and talking in dramatic opera style.