Building vocabulary is critical in our classroom, as with any first grade class. A lot of my students are learning to speak English. It is essential that these students understand English words, their variations, and their meanings. We encourage them to use them in their everyday reading, writing, speaking, and listening.
We love our "juicy words." Students understand that our writing can become more rich when we add purposeful adjectives and verbs. When students are reading, they find words that make the text more engaging, write them on a slip of paper, and place them in the correct bucket. Then, on Fridays, we read through them as a class and decide if any of the adjectives or verbs we found this week are more "juicy" than the ones we already have. Students use these words from their reading to enhance their own writing. We post other "important words" on a wall in our classroom and discuss them with each other frequently. Important and juicy words are found in our daily lives (social skills), as well in our reading and writing.
