Strategies for Success
Enhancing your student’s vocabulary (Part II):

Research shows that students retain new vocabulary best when words are personalized and used repeatedly in many different contexts.

Word sorts help children create conceptual models for words that appear in the same context, but have different meanings, e.g., words about climates – desert, temperate and tropical; weather conditions – snow, sunshine and hail.

Word sorts are easy and fun to create.

  • First you will need index cards in two different colors.
  • Select a subject area and identify 15 to 20 words related to the subject, but with different characteristics.
  • Write one word on each index card of same color.
  • Place them down (face up) in random order.
  • You can either pre-determine the names of the categories and write them on the second color and put in a row on top or you can have the student create the category headings on the second color index cards after student reviews the words on the index cards.
  • Students sort the words under the appropriate categories.

Here is an example:

CLIMATES
WEATHER
Desert
Snow
Temperate
Hail
Tropical
Sunshine

The more children read, the more vocabulary they will gain. As a break from reading, target only the most important vocabulary words for these activities without taking too much time away from the important main activity – reading itself.