A Word A Day Grades 1-3
A Word a Day provides a structured format to help students build vocabulary on a daily basis. Each of the 366 lessons contains the following features:
Part of Speech
The part of speech is given for each word. Teachers may choose whether to share this information.
Contextualized Sentence
Each new word is used in context, in a sentence. Each sentence is designed to provide enough context about the new word that students can easily grasp its meaning.
Definition
Each entry word is defined with a complete sentence.
Personal Connection
For each new word, students are asked to share an opinion, personal experience, or other comment that demonstrates their understanding of the new word. Connecting new information to previous experience facilitates learning.
Critical Attributes
To help students better understand and articulate exactly what the new word means, these exercises require them to identify features that are and are not attributes of the target word. One of the most effective ways to help students identify subtleties of meaning is to identify attributes that do not apply.
WORKSHEET & Sample PDF Activity
Sample PDF Activity
Scheduling
The one-a-day format is flexible enough to fit into your daily schedule in many ways. Consider any of the following:
• Introduce a new word each morning as part of your opening activities or other daily language activities.
• Present a new word as a warm-up activity before beginning reading and language arts instruction.
• Conduct activities as a way to provide focus during transition times.
• Photocopy pages and send them home to involve families in language development at home.
Presenting the Entries
To use the Word a Day activities in class, you may:
• Make overhead transparencies to present each of the new vocabulary words. Read aloud the word and its definition, as well as the contextualized sentence. You may continue to refer to the text on the overhead as you conduct the critical-attribute and personal-experience activities. This approach will be appreciated by all students who are visual learners.
• Read the entry for each word aloud to your class, and conduct the activities as strictly oral activities. In this case, you should write the word on the chalkboard so that students will have a visual association for it. This will allow both auditory and visual learners multiple ways in which to process the new information.
• If you wish to help strengthen students’ ability to work in both auditory and visual modes, alternate your mode of presentation of the Word a Day entries.
