Here are some helpful things to do at home to help your student
with reading and learning new vocabulary. Try some of these ideas to help
with understanding new words while they are reading at home.
Step 1: Tell what the word means in language that they will understand.
Step 2: Give them examples of what this word means and how to use it while
talking to others.
Step 3: Ask them to give you examples of what the new word means.
Step 4: Check to see if they understand the word by asking questions such
as, "Does this word mean....". Give examples that work and that don't work.
Step 5: Make a list of words that can be connected to the word.
Step 6: Make some sentence starters for them to use at home. Such as, "I
saw an example of this word when...."
Step 7: While reading, give them a Post-It note to draw a picture of the
new word.
Step 8: Have them compare the new word to other words that they already know.
Step 9: You can do a Word Square by taking a piece of paper and folding it
into 4 sections. In the first box write the definition of the new word. In
the second box write a synonym of the word. In the third box write an antonym
of the word. In the fourth box, draw a picture of the word or use the word in
a sentence of their own.
Step 10: Create a list of words, some that belong and some that do not and
have them cross out the words that don't belong.
Step 11: Look up the word in a dictionary to see if it can be used in other
ways. For example: the word "ceremony" is a noun, but it can also be shown
as "ceremonial" which is an adjective. This helps the student see that the
word can be used in a variety of ways.
Step 12: Survey them to see how well they understand the new word after
completing a few of these steps.
Here are some ideas that you can do before reading a nonfiction or fiction
story with chapters.
1. Read the chapter title and predict what will happen.
2. Read the chapter subtitles to show how each chapter is broken up into
specific topics (more so with nonfiction).
3. Read any questions that may be asked in the book first to get them ready
to look for information.
4. Read introduction of a story to activate their knowledge of a story.
5. Read bold words in the story and talk about their meaning before reading.
6. Read the first sentence of each paragraph to get an idea of the main ideas
in the story.
7. Look over ALL the text features. I always tell the kids that their eyes
look at the pictures first before reading so look over all things besides the
text and talk about what they can or have learned about the story.
8. Read the last paragraph to identify important ideas in the story.
9. If there are questions at the end of the book, read those first to give
the student an idea of what they need to look for in the book before reading.
To get students ready for the EOG go to
http://language.massey.ac.nz/staff/awl/headwords.shtml
to get a list of academic words that they will see on the EOG and discuss
their meanings in small batches.
Go to The Vocabulary Profiler page. On this page you can type in a passage
from a story and it will give you all the words that students should focus on
while reading. I haven't tried it out yet, but I am eager to give it a try.
http://www.er.uqam.ca/nobel/r21270/egi-bin/webfreqs/read_trial.egi
Go to The AWL Highlighter to do the same thing as the Vocabulary Profiler.
http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/~alzsh3/acvob/aslhighlighter.htm
These ideas were given to us by Dr. Linda New-Levine.