First observation...Vocabulary lesson

I'ts been almost a month since the last time I wrote a post.

I planned a vocabulary lesson for female fifth graders as a pre-reading exercise for an upcoming reading lesson about Grizzly Bears. The main goal of this lesson was to enable students to recognize and understand the meaning of each one of words from the vocabulary by identifying the category of the words and eventually using them in context.

For the warming-up activity I had prepared a pack of scrambled letters that were going to be given to groups of five students. The idea was to use the letters to form the words I was writing on the board as fast as possible. I have to say that my students were truly involved and excited about the whole game. They certainly had lots of fun competing with other groups! :D

Then I asked them if they knew the meaning of any of the words they had formed in order to present the topic. I let them know that the vocabulary was going to be very useful for a future reading lesson and provided them with handout that contained the words from the vocabulary.

For the presentation I tried to explain the meaning of the words by making an example. To make sure they understand the meaning of the words, I had also used some pictures. I found that some of them even tried to make up sentences using after each explanation and even came out with synonyms. Some others, on the other hand, made some questions that I found easy to answer.

To practice the vocabulary I had prepared two controlled activities. One was a fill-in-blank handout and the other one was a questionnaire they would have to fill up by using the words from the vocabulary.

Then, at the end of the lesson I told my students we were going to play another game about mimics. The idea was to try to mimic the vocabulary using our body and some sounds. This activity turned out to be rather funny for them and I could tell they were all participating actively in the mimic contest.

I really enjoyed this lesson...