Extending Vocabulary

In an effort to get our students, most of whom are fluent in English (although it is their second language), to build up their vocabularies, we do a lot of work with understanding unknown words in texts and within the context of writing.

This child's great work starts with the book Trumpet of the Swan, which was written more than 40 years ago. In the story there is a lot of unfamiliar, old-fashioned language that the students and I had to work through. One day we came across the word 'gay' which I immediately jumped on, describing (in not so many words) that in this context, 'gay' referred to being happy or light-hearted.

Evidently Ai, one of my students, had that word stuck in her head, because she used it later that week on one of her spelling assignments, which required students to write their spelling words in sentences. One of Ai's spelling words for the week was 'feel'. So, she wrote how she felt, which you can see in the picture below. This is now on my refrigerator...