Monday, February 14, 2011

Chapter 2

In 2nd grade we ask students to memorize vocabulary words with our weekly whole class reading selections. To help children with weak verbal short term memory we can teach children use their s tronger visuo-spatial short term memory by teaching hand gestures to go with their vocabulary words. This is an example of one of this week's words, its meaning and its gesture.

Word conservation- Meaning protection of Earth's natural resources, plants and animals- gesture-cup hands as if holding earth

The children are introduced to the vocabulary words and their gestures on the first day and we use the gestures everytime we use the words from the story.

1 comment:

Kathryn said...

I love this idea Cindy! What a great way for students to rememeber new vocabulary words in Literacy. We are learning about The Water Cycle in Science and I just introduced a song about it that has 3 big vocabulary words (evaporation, condensation, and precipitation). The song also has hand gestures to go with each vocabulary word. The kids love and song and doing the hand gestures with it. I will have to try this idea with vocabulary in literacy too.