Over the summer I was fortunate to have my school district send me to Chicago to the SDE Extraordinary Educators conference. While I was there (having a blast) I got to see Miss Babbling Abby from the Inspired Apple present.
That's us... she looks great. I look well, really tired in that terrible hotel lighting.
Anyway, she had a fantastic presentation that covered a lot of information but she also briefly discussed vocabulary. Knowing I was moving into second grade this year gave me a chance to look at my new curriculum and I knew vocabulary was going to be a big part of what I would need to teach. So I purchased Abby's Interactive Vocabulary Notebook. You can find it here.
It has been an excellent purchase!
This is an example her Insta-word activity from the Interactive Vocabulary Notebook.
Abby has multiple ways to complete this lesson but this is how I chose to teach it. I usually only have around 30 minutes for social studies so I have to be pretty efficient with how we spend the time.
The kids and I read a book called, Being a Good Citizen. Then they completed her worksheet which has three photo boxes for the them to show what they know about the word, in this case a citizen. Then together we chose their best example and they recreated the photo onto a new paper with color, put #citizen under the photo, then put all the ideas on an anchor chart. There were excellent examples of being a good citizen and while everyone was working they were discussing whether or not their ideas really showed supporting their community like a citizen would. I this activity really helped cement the idea of citizen in their minds.
We have since used Insta-Word for #democracy too with more great results, thanks Abby.
