Sunday, July 12, 2015

Free Way to Study Vocab

My daughter is entering 7th grade this year.  Wow!  Wow...  Wow.  All sorts of emotions flood my head.  She's a tween.  Her academics will be changing this year.  She'll be taking 3 classes at co-op (though 1 of them will be taught by me).  I have most of her curriculum in place, but I needed a plan for her vocabulary notebook.  I use a combination of things because I'm a cheapskate.

1)  For grades 6-8, she does 30 pages (1 page per day) from the book 101 Vocabulary Words in Context each year.  Then, she works in a vocabulary notebook...

2)  Vocabulary Notebook
I was talking with my husband the other day about the Economist.  We have a student subscription (which is much cheaper than a normal subscription).  He asked if the girls could use it this year as part of their curriculum.  And the idea clicked!  I am going to have Autumn read 1 article per week.  She will highlight the words she doesn't know and then complete a vocabulary worksheet.  From that list, I will pick several words for her to complete different vocabulary diagrams for through the week.  I will also put a tab in her notebook where she can write down words from other readings for other subjects that she doesn't know.    (I tried this out and it turned out that she knew 13 of 15 words I pulled out from 2 articles... so we're going to also have her use Wind in the Willows which is heavy in vocabulary this year.)

(You could use another source that you have in your home besides the economist that is full of rich vocabulary.)

Here's a link to my weekly schedule with the notebook: 
https://lovetopaint.files.wordpress.com/2015/07/weekly-vocabulary-plan.pdf

Yay!

I downloaded a few free sheets from Teachers Pay Teachers.  I couldn't figure out how to link to them, so here are the names of them:

1) Words Worth Knowing Sheet
You can find it here:
https://lovetopaint.files.wordpress.com/2015/07/words-worth-knowing-worksheet.pdf
The pdf has 2 pages--only print page 1 when you go to print.

2) Vocabulary Squares by the Idea Cubby  This is the only page I'm using from Teachers Pay Teachers after all.

3) Vocabulary Notebook Page: 
https://lovetopaint.files.wordpress.com/2015/07/vocabularynotebook-page.pdf

So, that's my plan!  I'm excited that her notebook is now organized and ready to go.

As a side note, last year, she worked through 240 words every 6th grader needs to know (which she really liked).  She also completed the 5th grade book because we discovered this curriculum just this past year.  My younger kids also work through these workbooks to increase their vocabulary and the prefixes and suffixes books by practice makes perfect ($5 each and reproducible!)  I'm all about less expensive, reproducible books.  That's why I've had a hard time swallowing the cost and jumping into Wordly Wise, Word Roots books, or Vocabulary from Classical Roots books.  All look nice and if I only had 1 student to purchase books for, I would consider going that route.  But, I have 3 and it all adds up...

Added Note:
I had this idea next year to add on another chart and way for her to study vocabulary.
I downloaded these charts:
http://teacher.scholastic.com/reading/bestpractices/vocabulary/pdf/prefixes_suffixes.pdf
plus the Greek and Latin Root Charts from here:
http://www.readingrockets.org/article/root-words-roots-and-affixes

If you want a VERY thorough list, you can go HERE.
Another good List.

Here's the worksheet I made to use with the lists:  https://lovetopaint.files.wordpress.com/2015/07/vocab-word-parts-worksheet.pdf
I am going to use this worksheet for the words I want her to break apart and figure out.



3 comments:

becky.onelittle said...

This post brings up a burning question from your dedicated readers. To which periodicals do you have a subscription for yourself or your spouse or you children? Inquiring minds want to know :)

Anne said...

You're too funny! I know of 3 friends who regularly read my blog and you're one of them. :) We subscribe to the economist (but I'm going to give Autumn articles I've already read). Sami gets the American Girl magazine which I've actually been very pleased with. There was a story last fall that opened the door for us to talk about what happened with my mom (when she was very sick last year and other people didn't understand) because the girl in the story seemed upset and the other girls judged her for it instead of reaching out to her. We get Ranger Rick, The Lego Club magazine (free), and Eli gets a boys one that he finds funny--I'll have to find it. They used to get Highlights when they were younger and I really like it. Chris gets 3 motorcycle magazines and I get Popular Photography. I found that the Smithsonian has different levels of news articles at the tweentribune.com. I've pulled and printed articles from that for different homeschooling assignments. I haven't tried using the economist before with Autumn, but I think it's going to be one of the few things that has the high vocab that Autumn needs to be challenged by. We stopped subscribing to World Magazine a long time ago, but I read articles online from Christianity Today periodically and Relevant once in a while. Oh, and Chris has gotten Mars Hill Audio Journal for over ten years. For a little while, he got First Things and I think the New York Times Book Review, but he found he never got around to reading them. Writing this list makes me realize how many magazines come into our house! We do also have a subscription to the local paper which comes two weekdays plus on the weekends we get the city paper. Ay ay ay! That is quite a few, isn't it?! I don't subscribe to any homeschooling magazines, though I'm not sure why. We get the magazines from our mission organization for the PCA and I read them as well as the magazines that HSLDA and Bethany Christian Services send out, though. Okay, I better stop this list. I think that's everything though! What about you?

becky.onelittle said...

I think World is the only one that we get and consistently read. We do read newsletters/magazines from different mission organizations that we support. We used to do American Girl and Ranger Rick but I got tired of having so much paper in the house. I used to love Animal Baby too. We may need to do that one again for Abigail (now 2). I'm interested in the Economist. We may try it this year. I think I'd like to try to subscribe to e-versions- 5 of us have electronic devices we can read on, and the other 3 can share. I hate the feeling that we generate so much paper waste in our larger size family (although we actually don't regularly fill our trash can every week, so we must not really generate more waste).
I used to get National Geographic before the kids were born. I'm tempted to again. I love the photography and the articles were always interesting. I took away the Lego magazine because they obsessed over it. I now realize that I have taken away nearly all the periodicals that came into the house. My children may be deprived...