Working with Dictionary Definitions

At this point in the lesson, I pass our the vocabulary graphic organizer.  For this particular group of students (general ed and ELL), I have selected key words that will help students understand the story.  However, with advanced students it would be interesting to see if they could self-select words they needed to know to understand the passage.  This is a great opportunity for differentiation!

My students are always a little bit, well, FREAKED OUT by the size of the graphic organizer.  This is a great opportunity to talk about our groups and the collaborative classroom we work in. 

(If you're limited in your copies, you can create this resource simply by having kids fold a sheet paper into four sections and copy the format)

I will ask the students to do a little problem solving:  "We have 14 words we need to look up in the dictionary.  What could we do to make this a little bit easier on everyone?"  My hope is that someone will figure out we can divide and conquer.  We even have a discussion about that phrase and what it means.  This year, I got a lot of video game analogies about dividing enemy forces!

The way that I like to divide the workload is to assign a couple of words to each group.  Someone will suggest that they split the work amongst the members of their group, but I shy away from this.  If there are students who are weak in vocabulary skills, they are left to flounder alone.  However, if they can work on their definitions as a group, more learning can take place.

I warn them that they will be explaining each word's meaning to the class, so if they don't understand a word in the definition, they need to look that up too!

This is a great time to have a little review of dictionary skills.  Before I set the students free to look up their words, I ask them if the group who has the word "lurking" will be able to find it as an entry in the dictionary.  We will talk about how they will find the root word, lurk, as the main entry.

At this point, I let the kids work as I circulate to watch their progress.  There will be groups who will focus on speed.  There's always that kid who loves to shout, "I'm done!"  My response to that is to check their work and make sure they can tell me in their own words what their vocabulary words mean.

Now it's time to share out definitions.  I use my Smart Board to follow along with the kids.  However, a transparency will work as well. What's great about doing the work this way is that the kids have to listen to their classmates because the group who is presenting has information each student will need.