Happy Spring everyone! We have Spring break here so I finally have time to finish a project. I have been working on this one for a while and have tried out a version of these vocabulary cards with my 4th through 6th graders. I seem to have quite a few students with low vocabulary this year. The Common Core State Standards put a strong emphasis on nonfiction, and informational text. If they have difficulty with vocabulary it affects their comprehension. The teachers are beginning to really notice with test preparation in full swing.
I had a student transfer in with a goal that referred to Tier II Vocabulary. I decided to investigated so I could address his goal. Tier II Vocabulary turned out to be those words that occur frequently in academic text. Students may find these words when reading Science, Social Studies and English text I wanted something that would make the most impact for my students and also have a way to track progress. I decided to make a list of words from Tier II vocabulary lists and then use them in the contexts of short paragraphs. This way I could also address comprehension and making inferences from text. There are two different activities. One involves describing the meaning of words and the other is answering comprehension questions. One set requires students to find the answers from given answers and the other is answering the questions and referring to the answers. The level of support can be quite flexible depending on how you cut and fold them.
The words used on my task cards are not a complete compilation and come from a variety of 3rd and 4th grade vocabulary lists. I used what made sense in the context of the paragraphs I wrote. I used a total of 106 words. A few are used more than once and cover multiple meaning. I now can write a goal for teaching Ter II Vocabulary to 80% and measure it. I love making data collection simple.
I made a trial set for you to try. It gives you an idea of what they look like up close.
If you find these fit your needs, there is a full set available on TPT, just click the button below.
