Laugh and Learn with Silly Sam: June 2014

Here is a tip for a "Word Wall". I have very little wall space available in my classroom, but I do have these large window shades. Use what you have and design something to fit your space. I wrote out the alphabet on chart paper and laminated them. I used black for consonants and black with Yellow highlights for the vowels.

I write each week's Fry Vocabulary words under the correct letter and the kiddos do the same in their little green word book.

Now, here's the problem with a vocabulary list like Fry or Dolch, they have those high frequency words covered, but it is hard if not impossible to make sentences out of just those words.

So, I created my Nouns, Verbs & Adjectives program to compliment the Fry Vocabulary list. Each week my first graders receive 5 black Fry word cards. The first 200 words have been broken up into 40 weeks of 5 words. Then they also receive 6 color coded Nouns (red) Verbs (green) and Adjectives (blue), 2 of each. The words are carefully chosen so that sentences can be constructed using only the weekly words (with a few exceptions).

This program has worked beautifully. I have large color coded word cards for my pocket chart to introduce, display and review the weekly words. The students copy the words and color code on their own in their vocabulary notebooks. We play Smiley Bingo with the words, This is a vocabulary game that I created many years ago. It is easily differentiated. I have Bingo boards with 6, 9 or 12 boxes. Students can play the game with just the 5 new words and an X box or a bonus word. Another option is to use the 5 new words plus 4 from the previous week. The most advanced students can use the Vocabulary words plus the Nouns, Verbs & Adjectives with a bonus word.

Students receive 3 fun pages of vocabulary activities for their word work folders and also receive flashcards for homework practice and building and writing vocabulary sentences. This is also easily differentiated by assigning just the Vocabulary words or adding the Nouns, Verbs & Adjectives as well. Students that are required to use all 5 Fry words can use the nouns, verbs & adjectives as needed. The more challenging differentiation requires all 6 nouns, verbs & adjectives to be used in sentences.

There is a pocket chart set of sentences to accompany every set of weekly words. All of the Fry words are used and some of the nouns, verbs & adjectives are used to create sentences for the week. Students can copy those sentences or create their own depending on their abilities. The assignments can also start out slower and each month have an additional differentiation added. Kindergarten, Second Grade and some Special Education classes are also using this system, according to feedback from some of my customers. This can be used for any students learning the first 200 Fry Words. This can be a great center, assigned word work or an RTI strategy, besides the whole class model that I have described for First Grade.

There are options for color coding as well. One set can be printed in color and then others can be done on a color copier. I understand that stores like Staples can have very reasonable rates for a center station set. For student flash cards, printing or photocopying can be down in black, then have the students color code by drawing a red, green or blue square around the nouns, verbs and adjectives. This can also add a differentiation and make part of the lesson identifying the parts of speech that each word would belong to.

Nouns, verbs & adjectives: I have found that my students were much more solid on the parts of speech by the end of the year because they have worked with them every week, vs. focusing on nouns for a week, then verbs and adjectives for one week, every now and then like in other programs that I have used.

Well, here are a few products that represent the program I have been describing.

1st 200 Fry Vocabulary Cards Large-Display