Word-A-Day
Level: Any
Materials Needed: Students need a notebook set aside for this ongoing exercise.
Time: 15 min. exercise
Purpose: To allow students to build vocabulary in a useful manner by putting it to use in writing skills. Students should learn to express themselves and ideas about their surroundings. Also this exercise makes writing a consistent but fun part of their learning. This could be a good starter to open each class session.
Technique:
1) Each day the teacher gives the student one or two words. Students write them down in their notebook creating a dictionary which will grow throughout the year.
(These words should be ones which are somehow used in the lesson so they are not merely abstract ideas for the students.)
I suggest words which teach the student to express feeling, who they are, and their environment.
Here are a few examples.
feel sad cold
taste happy hot
ate joy tasty
try impatient long
want angry/mad boring
(different verb tenses can be used accommodate various student levels)
2) At the end of the week students are allotted a time to write a sentence (as they advance it may be increased to a paragraph) incorporating the words learned that week. The teacher may need to prime them with a question at first. “What do you think of this classroom? Write about how you feel when you are with your family.” The main idea is to get them writing.
Note: The teacher may decide to grade this or not but I think this exercise would be a good means to evaluate how well the students are learning, hear comments on the classroom and get to know the students on a more personal level. However, teachers must be sure to not betray the trust a student may place in them when they write about personal matters