1. 7 pieces of copy paper folded into a booklet
2. including it as a section in our notebook
Either way, it works great!
In each lesson, academic vocabulary was pre-taught. We would write the word and have a discussion about what they knew/thought they knew about the term. We would then write a student friendly definition. Lastly, students came up with an illustration that helped them link the word and definition. We would talk about a couple of examples as a class, and students could pick the one that worked for them.
My illustrations ranged from unfortunate to gross- even scandalous once. It was an accident. I promise!
New words were applied to class assignments that day and were there for future reference. It also saved me lots of words. We didn't have to reteach, reteach, reteach what a simile was. Students could reference their dictionaries anytime and were encouraged to do so.
I know that our visual dictionary benefited all students but was incredibly powerful for our LEP population.
I am kind of embarrassed to say this, but Visual Dictionaries didn't work as well in my classroom as I thought they would :( It's definitely because of me. First off, I think I like including it as a section in their notebook rather than folding computer paper and making a book...that can be lost...even if there's a folder for it. Next year, I definitely plan on pre-teaching vocabulary and then making sure we put the definitions in our Visual Dictionaries. I really do believe that putting the definition in its own place AND coming up with a visual representation of that definition lets kids see and remember and learn the term. I will definitely implement this strategy more (and better) in my classroom!
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