Vocabulary Posters

I had the opportunity to teach summer school with a wonderful group of teachers again this summer.  It is at a different school than my own so it was fun to learn a different style of teaching and get to work with a new group of peers.  I wanted to share an idea that we used, and they use, throughout the school year. 

Our three weeks were centered around a science/social studies theme and we had 10 vocabulary words a week.  After the pre-test, we broke the students into 5 groups.  Each group was given one of the vocabulary words, written in the middle of their poster.  They used an iPad to do a Google search of images of their word (I would do this prior to the students to make sure that there were appropriate pictures).  After they found a picture they liked, they drew that picture in their section of the poster.  Then they wrote a sentence to go with it.  Myself and the other teachers would walk around the room and meet with each group to help them come up with a kid-friendly definition.  The kids had to do a lot of critical thinking to come up with a definition that fit and accurately portrayed their word.  This was written underneath the vocab word on their poster. It was fun to watch the kids collaborate and help each other creatively represent their word.

When everyone was finished, we all came together to present the posters.  We did the other five vocab words after lunch so that they had a chance to become an 'expert' on two of the words and listen to the other students communicate about their expertise.  The posters were hung around the room so that the kids could use them as a resource for the remainder of the week.  On the post-test, each student made growth, often going from a 20-30% average on the pre-test to an 87-100% average on the post-test. Yay!  ...and this activity used all 4 Cs.  Collaboration, communication, creativity, and critical thinking.  Phew!