Unit Vocabulary for EAL Learners

During the last couple of weeks I was teaching new unit vocabulary to my Grade 2 and Grade 3 EAL learners.

In Grade 3 we choose to create a version of an understanding map for the word UNIQUE. During the first session the students were asked what they thought the word UNIQUE meant. They had to draw what UNIQUE was for them. One of our G3 teachers Mrs.Claire Webster prepared a short video for our students to watch prior to the session. It was very helpful and guided their thinking. In the end of the session our Grade 3 students came up with a class definition of the word UNIQUE.

The next time we met, we continued to fill in our understanding map and talked about synonyms. Some students easily came up with the words RARE, DIFFERENT, UNUSUAL. For some students it was more challenging and I added words like SPECTACULAR and SPECIAL to their lists. Again the students had to explain using words and symbols what the word meant to them.

To consolidate the knowledge of the new word we had a discussion about our planet in my EAL class and the majority of my EAL students were able to use the words SPECIAL, UNIQUE, RARE while talking about Earth.

Students in Miss Lisa's class are presenting their understanding maps of the word UNIQUE

Yubin was proud to share her understanding map as well.

In Grade 2 we began to talk about perspective, imagination and art. Once again it was challenging for some of the students. To support my students in constructing their own meaning of more abstract words like PERSPECTIVE I prepared the following activities. First we discussed the images of the words and played the matching game (the students were supposed to match the card with the word and the card with the definition). Our students had to do it in groups and it was interesting to observe the process and to listen to their discussion that took place during the game.

Next they had to work with true/false statement with the new vocabulary and completed a cloze activity. Finally during the second session the students were ready to begin working with personal dictionaries were they had to show their understanding of the word by writing the definition with their own words, creating a symbol for the word and use the word in their own sentence.