- Improve college readiness by enhancing vocabulary.
- Improve comprehension of assigned reading.
- In a 15 minute homework assignment, familiarize students with 20 well-selected words they will soon see in a novel.
- Increase word awareness (to encourage life-long & immediate book-related increases in vocabulary).
- Familiarize students with the format of vocabulary questions on the SAT and ACT tests.
National Standards:
Without detracting from the other class objectives, this assignment helps to meet Common Core Vocabulary Acquisition and Use standards specifically and ELA Literacy standards in general.
For a list of those standards:
- See Common Core ELA Standards (link last checked 6/1/17)
- Choose Language from the menu on the right
- Choose the grade level of interest
Time Required:
about 15 minutes
Materials:
Computer, tablet, or smart phone with Internet access. Email, printer, or other method of showing completion to teacher. (See Adaptations such as paper quiz below. A library computer can also be used.)
Student Procedures:
- Select book at verbalworkout.com
- Browse the quiz words with Typical Sentences and click on any that are unfamiliar
- Select Pre-reading Quiz and answer the 20 questions
- Print, email, or show results to teacher
Adaptations:
- Teachers can print the quiz and have student's take it on paper.
- The Extra Credit quizzes can be assigned for academically motivated students.
- A student can take the pre-reading (typical sentence) quiz from a book previously read for extra credit.
- Students can be given extra points for using their words in writing assignments or finding printed examples of use.
- Teachers can assign either the pre-reading or post-reading assignment instead of both.
- Teachers can print word lists and let students write their own sample sentences without requiring use of a computer.
Details on writing sample sentences
For this kind of assignment, the sentence would have to meaningful to the student. For example, of the following two sentences that use the word deride, only the second is credit worthy:
She was derided.
She was derided for liking the movie.
Note that any form of the word can be used in the sample sentence. For deride, acceptable forms would be deride, derided, deriding, derides, derisive, derisively, or derision.
Download This Lesson Plan
as a Microsoft Word document (including rationale and citations)