Vocabahead & Toasted Cheese

Students need tremendous support in developing their vocabulary - here is a website a colleague has been using to create handouts from to provide her ELA 30-1s with a "glossary" of words:

VocabAhead

Sample Handout for Taming of the Shrew

I frequently pair vocabulary words with creative writing - my students complain for a bit, but very quickly get the hang of it and become very proud of their pieces and even want to share them aloud. When I'm stuck for creative writing prompts, I turn to Toasted Cheese Daily Writing Prompts.

Ways I use this in my classroom:

• provide students with a list of words each week and then create a weekly game/quiz situation for the words (something fun for Fridays?)
• after students have accumulated a list of words (either from handouts, or ones from short stories), I have them pick the words they "struggle" with (I choose a number - usually around 15) and then they use them in their writing prompts; this helps in differentiating their writing and learning very easily