Academic Word of the Week

     At Pound Middle School (LPS) the academic goal is to have students improve their comprehension of informational text. As a part of this students are given a pretest to see which words they struggle with that might be a part of the block that prevents them from fully comprehending the text they are reading.

     Using the data collected from the pre-test a list of words students struggled with was created. Each week during the school year there is a new word from the list. In my classroom Mondays are vocabulary days.  Each class is spent discussing the word, definition(s), and examples.  Students are then asked to complete a word web of what they think of when they hear the word of the week.  They are also asked to write a sentence using the word correctly.  Once the sentence is approved by me, students are asked to illustrate their sentences.

Here is an example using this weeks word estimate:

The sentence reads: "It's hard to estimate how many people are on (in) this world."

     I'm also adding a bit more to it this week. Since the word of the week is estimate what better way to reinforce then word by having a jelly bean jar?  The kids to be having fun with this! :-)  Here are the instructions on the board at the front of the classroom:

The small blue writing says, "Use estimate in a sentence correctly AND guess with 10 to win!"