Big Words for Little Scholars

Little kids love BIG WORDS.

I remember learning to spell the word poinsettia in kindergarten. It was December, and my amazing teacher (aren’t all kindergarten teachers amazing?) had squeezed every bit of learning out of that flower incorporating science, language, and art! After teaching us all about the flower, our teacher challenged us to learn to spell its name. If we could, we got to choose something from her treasure box!

Mrs. Kale, that wonderful lady, is surely part of the reason I’m such a word lover today. As a teacher, it’s been a delight introducing little ones to big words. Who doesn’t love hearing a kindergartner correctly use words such as “preposterous” and “voracious?” It’s just so darn cute!

Obviously, vocabulary development is a huge topic, and there are many great resources out there. Teaching “big words” through literature is what teachers are all about. It seems that this is the best method, too- teaching words in context.

So, when I was tasked with developing a school-wide vocabulary enrichment program, it was a challenge. Like many elementary GT teachers, I was dubbed the “enrichment coordinator” at my school and one year, my principal asked me to come up with some kind of campus-wide program to boost vocabulary from K-5th grade.

After a week or two of brainstorming ideas, I came up with the “WOW Words” program. The “WOW” stood for “Word of the Week” (nothing new there!) and also for words that were novel and advanced and fun to use, words that would “wow” others.

If you’re tasked with being the “enrichment coordinator” at your site, or if vocabulary enrichment is one of your class goals this year, you may want to know more, so here’s how it worked:

(1) Each week, as part of our school’s morning announcements, two advanced vocabulary words were introduced. Through jokes, stories, and quick messages, each day there was an elaboration on the Words of the Week, heard by the entire school.

(2) Throughout the week, the K-5 teachers incorporated these words as they taught. In fact, all of the staff and parents tried to use the words in conversation and encouraged students to enter the weekly drawing contest. Suggestions for how to use the words in classroom situations were shared with teachers via email.

(3) Students created illustrations of the word meanings, and we displayed these in a central location of the school. Two of the drawings were selected as winners, not merely for their artistic value, but for the work put into the illustration and for correctly illustrating the words. On Friday, the two winners were called to the office to receive some kind of prize.

At the end of the year, we published the winning cartoons in beautiful hardbound books (shown below). There are many great book-creator tools now; I used Blurb. The students’ names were listed in the back of the book, and many parents purchased copies to keep.

It took some time and effort to create lists of words that were good pairs (we covered two words per week). I’ve provided a sample list of words below (9 weeks). You can also see the first week of morning announcements we read over the intercom. This gives you a chance to see sample word talks. You can purchase an entire year of word talks by year in my TPT store. You can subscribe to this site or join the Facebook group if you’d like to be notified when sets are available.

FIRST WEEK of MORNING ANNOUNCEMENTS (FREE)

WORD TALKS FOR YEAR ONE AVAILABLE HERE ($8.00)

WORD TALKS FOR YEAR TWO AVAILABLE HERE ($8.00)

WORD TALKS FOR YEAR THREE WILL BE AVAILABLE in 2025

It’s been gratifying to hear from so many teachers who are using this vocabulary enrichment program in their schools. GT Resource Specialist Kerry DiFusco created mini-posters like the one shown below to display around her school (make a copy as a template HERE). She’s also been choosing books to share with students that include or hint at the meanings of the words each week- love that! You can find her WOW Word story list for the 1st 9 weeks HERE.

You probably have used similar techniques for vocabulary enrichment in your classroom and school. The WOW Words program could work in a single classroom, of course, but it was well-received at our elementary school, so we continued it for three years.

In my GT classroom, vocabulary enrichment centered more around Greek and Latin roots which I loved introducing with a 45-letter word! (see A Greek Root is Worth 1,000 Words). We also learned advanced vocabulary by participating in the WordMasters Challenge (see “Think and Link” ~ Teaching Students to Solve Advanced Verbal Analogies). In addition, I used the book Vocabulary Cartoons with my 3rd-5th grade students, and they voluntarily began creating their own cartoons, which I displayed in my classroom. And, just recently, I’ve created another vocabulary enrichment resource called Crypt-O-Words which presents advanced vocabulary words through puzzles, hidden-word texts, and interdisciplinary texts.

I hope some of you are able to use these word lists and resources. Please feel free to share some of your favorite vocabulary resources!

About six months after writing this, I began working on a unique vocabulary enrichment resource for GT elementary and middle school students called Crypt-O-Words. You can read the story of how these ended up being published by The Critical Thinking Company.

You may also be interested in the WORLD OF WORDS VIRTUAL MUSEUM described in the post 3 Ways to Engage Students Using a Virtual Museum Template! Subscribe to this blog if you’d like to be updated when new resources and posts are added. 😃