Teacher Motivation Saturday & Vocabulary Ideas

 

I know that it's technically, "Student Motivation Saturday", but sometimes, teachers are motivated too and that's just as worthy of being shared!

At an inservice following Winter Break, I found out that I would no longer be with a small skill intervention group, but a large vocabulary skills group. (Going from just a handful of students to close to 30, short notice, and I really like to have a plan of attack. I may have had a slight panic attack.)

So I did what many teacher bloggers may do, jump on pinterest, search out my favorite blogs, and email blogging buddies for any and all ideas. Let me just tell you, I was overwhelmed by the results. Tons of ideas and products were shared. I am forever grateful for so many individuals who give of themselves, share ideas, friendships made... having the blogging buddies that I do and resources such as blogs to scour both are truly motivating to me!

I've delayed this post so that I could have pictures to share, but between my health issues last month, and the very few brain cells that are left by the end of the day when I have this group I usually forget to take pictures. I apologize for the lack of real-world photos, but I hope you'll still find some ideas!

Joanne shared with me a couple of word work activities that my students love! I've pulled them out about once a week, and the whole class gets into them!

My students especially love the word wizards. It works great for team competitions as well. 

Diane, shared about program that she had used before that included morphology: Reading Olympians. I had remembered reading about the program in the past, but it was nice to hear about how it worked for an extended period of time in a classroom.

Catherine had a new product out in December that I had to have: her root word puzzles. She has a new pack with prefixes and suffixes that I'm going to have to purchase as well. The puzzles make for a wonderful center to review different roots that we've covered throughout the week.

I remember that Amelia had boggle boards in some of her centers packs. A great game included with several centers that I was able to use throughout my communications classes. Her February centers even had a center on various affixes that worked out really well too.

Last year, I bought a resource from Ladybug Teacher Files, it was a morphology dictionary. When I inherited this vocabulary group, I emailed Kristin as well, and she shared many ideas with me too! She's made new posters with morphology and curriculum terms and graphic organizers as well.

Seriously, I was overwhelmed by the response and ideas that were shared. This vocabulary group has been a lot of fun and I feel that the students are learning more as a result of this wonderful network of teachers that blogging brings! Teacher-motivation that then turns to student-motivation, love!