Are you Grading Your Nerf Darts?

More about Word Walls and Vocabulary!

Or

Are you Grading Your Nerf Darts? 

Back in the Day…

(Don’t you love that phrase!?! - NOT!!)

 Back in the day, we would have students sit in desks alphabetically, facing the front, both feet on the floor, be quite and do your work!!  When papers and tests were retrieved from the students, they were trained to pass them up in a certain order so that the teacher would be gifted with papers already in alphabetical order, ready to be graded and recorded! 

Now we live in the days of flexible seating where a student with the last name ending in “B” is lounging in a beach chair beside a student with the last name ending in “W” who is seated in a gaming chair covered in leopard print as they both answer their test on a Nerf dart which will be fired into or near a trash can for the teacher to retrieve and grade said dart. 

So what can be done to ensure that a teacher doesn’t lose her mind when recording grades from the Nerf darts?  It’s too simple to even mention, but SOMEBODY SHOWED ME AND MADE MY WORLD A LITTLE BETTER - So I’m showing you…

Just make a spreadsheet with columns of names, a column for the grade, and a place for the date and assignment name.  Grade your Nerf darts in the order in which they are fired upon you, record the grade on the handy-dandy spreadsheet as you go, and voila!  You have an alphabetical listing of grades to enter into your gradebook! 

Now, let’s discuss how to be successful with Word Walls and Vocabulary.  As I wrote about in a previous blog, I have a wall for AcademicVocabulary, the 88 most important words for students to memorize, apply, use, understand, interpret, analyze, etc.  I also stole the idea from B’s Book Love to have a vocabulary word-wall in which words are color-coded based on parts-of-speech.  Students are given 5 words every Monday on Lexicon Monday along with two Greek or Latin roots.  They copy the words/roots, definitions, part-of-speech, synonym, and sample sentence into their dictionary found in their Interactive Notebook.  I also provide a list of ALL words in their Google drive for the times we are able to use computers.  I teach Academic Words as I teach based on what we are learning that week. 

But how easy it is to just let those words sit and stew and never be revisited or used or committed to memory.  I decided to make the usage of these words - both Weekly Vocabulary and Academic Vocabulary words - part of their homework.

Students are required to use “X” number of words per nine weeks in their writing in ANY CLASS - not just ELA.  I change the requirement of words per nine weeks based on what we are doing.  If they are in my classroom and use a word, they simply raise their hand and show me.  If they don’t have me nearby, I’ve asked them to highlight words - yellow for vocabulary and green for academic vocabulary.  If they use a word on a poster or paper or assignment in another classroom, they either bring it to me, share it with me, take a photo of it, or whatever it takes to show me they have attempted to improve their vocabulary. 

Another piece of our Lexicon puzzle is finding words containing the roots we are studying.  They are required to watch out for words containing roots that we are trying to commit to memory.  Therefore, I have a column for “Find A Root” as well.  

Again, I make a spreadsheet with student names and the number of times they are expected to use words.  As they use one, I circle the number, tally them at the end of the nine-weeks, and give a grade accordingly. 

And that’s how we improve our vocabulary!