Saturday, December 10, 2011

Build Word Skills to Sharpen Vocabulary and Have Some Fun Doing It:)

How often do students have to take high stakes test with challenging vocabulary? Too often most students would say:) However, here is a site that used as part of a test taking strategy or prep would help to demystify the process of selecting the correct word in those tests.

This site uses several unique approaches to strengthening vocabulary bases for students of all ages. First, students (or teachers) select the subject specific academic terms they want their students to know. The subjects covered are the sciences, math, English, social studies, and foreign languages along with practice for high stakes tests such as TOEFL, ACT, and SAT. All grade levels are covered here as well from elementary through 12th grade and beyond! Second, DYNAMO keeps a running record of all scores (student must create a free account to do this) students can monitor progress. Teachers might encourage students to keep growth charts in their notebooks. ELLs would definitely benefit from an activity like this since learning a new language at the same time they are trying to do well academically in content classes being conducted in a new tongue is no easy task. With this site, ELLs would be able to see improved performance over time (with the side benefit being that they are developing an expanding passive vocabulary). Last, teachers could use the individual progress quizzes as a vehicle through which they can demonstrate how to guess definitions through word forms, Latin/Greek roots, parts of speech, and incorrect answer elimination. Such an activity would only take 5 or so minutes. The goal is to have the teacher model the thought process (think aloud) and then give students time to do the same.

WORD DYNAMO
is a free website teachers will use time after time. Students will quickly fall i love with it also.

I hope your students have as much fun with the site as I did (and still do).

Denise

ELL TEACHER PROS

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