Vocabulary Is the Key to Understanding

     

     In a previous post I briefly mentioned Voki as a great tool to use with students to help them develop fluency when reading.  Voki can also be a great tool for vocabulary development.  Rather than having students write out definitions in a notebook, even an interactive notebook, have them create a digital avatar that will give the definition of the word.  As the teacher,  you can then group and organize individual student vokis so the class has access to them all.  They can be linked in a project or uploaded on a webpage.  I purchased Voki classroom for my fourth grade students and they have used it to define reading comprehension terms amoung other things.  They are engaged, and it gives a quick spot check as to who thoroughly understands the terminology, versus who only has a surface understanding.

     Spellingcity.com is a website that you can create customizable lists of students spelling words or vocabulary words.  Students can then play matching and mulpile choice review games to go over the vocabulary.  Part of the site is subscription, but a good portion of the site is free.

     However, one of my favorite ways for vocabulary and concept development is to have students create word clouds.  There are three applications I have used for word clouds in the past.  The first is located in the letters section of grades 2-5 at www.abcya.com, and is simply entitled word clouds.  The second Wordle, is very similar.  However, I have occasionally had difficulties with Wordle not printing for students.  The third, and my favorite is Tagxedo.  This one will have the words take the form of a silhouette.  You can use the examples they have, or do an image search for a silhouette of your choosing.    I used Tagxedo for the graphic at the top of this post.  The words I used most often show up in the image, the larger the word, the more it was used.  I simply pasted the text of thus blog into the silhouette; a key because vocabulary holds the key to understanding.  You can type directly into a word cloud, or paste a document as I did.  Words that are used more frequently will appear larger.  You can then customize the colors and layout.