November, 2006 Chalk Talk
"Fab Vocab: Ideas for Implementing Best Practices in All Classrooms"
These suggestions can be used at the county level or within individual schools and classrooms. The goal is to make books, and the authors who write them, come to life and motivate students to become lifelong readers and writers.

1. When a student uses words like bad, sad, good, happy, nice, interesting, I draw a "timeline" on the chalkboard and ask students to imagine "bad," for example, and tell me where to place it on a line that ranks from weakest to strongest. Then we fill in other words like terrible, horrible, disgusting, putrid, no-good, etc. By the time we finish with this 5 minute lesson, students have a choice of synonyms that are ranked for them. I often tell my students to write these in their notebooks or journals for future reference.
2. The other strategy I use, which a mentor friend gave me, is a word graveyard. After reviewing a list of words that are vague, meaningless, or overused, students complete little headstones with these words and paste them on the wall. If they slip and use that word, I can point to the wall and say, "I think that word has moved on to a better place. What other word can we use in its memory?" I know of one teacher who actually buried these words in a shoebox outside her portable. I have, on occasion, and with permission from the building super, used a science beaker and burned the offending words in front of my class. The drama is exciting!

Sicnerely, Kathleen Mikos
President-Elect, Harford County Reading Council

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Hello! My name is Annmarie Steltzer and I'm a Literacy Coach at Roye-Williams Elementary School in Harford County. A strategy that I've shared with the classroom teachers at my school is something I call "Scrambled Eggs." I use the large plastic eggs that can be found around Easter time for this strategy. I take vocabulary terms from a story or upcoming unit of study and type them in large font on strips of paper. Next, I cut the words letter by letter or by chunks, prefixes, root words, suffixes etc... It just depends on the age / ability of the students or the purpose for the lesson. I underline the first letter of the word as well and write the definition or a clue for each word on a second strip. One cut up vocabulary term and its definition or clue goes into each egg. Students are given the eggs individually or in small groups. They are asked to scramble the egg (shake it) and pour out the contents onto their desks. Students spend the next several minutes using the definition strip and their word knowledge to unscramble the vocabulary words. After all of the words are unscrambled we list them on the board and discuss possible predictions regarding what the story will be about or what we will be studying in the upcoming weeks. This hands-on strategy is very motivating for students as they become familiarized with vocabulary terms.