My colleagues and I recently studied an instructional technique for teaching vocabulary. Students were asked to create their own glossary for an informational text in which there was none. Through our discussion, we stumbled upon an idea:
What would happen if we had book club students create and keep glossaries in their books?
We immediately set about constructing them. Using 4x6" post-it notes, the students started adding the vocabulary words that the "word finder" taught them each day to a glossary in the back cover of the book. Our intent is to have the students keep these in the books from year to year, adding and improving the word lists!
This small addition to the book club meetings has been highly motivating and has added some authentic purpose to the discussion of words.
