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Vocabulary Wheel for ELLs in ELA

The teacher used a word wheel strategy to help 8th grade students learning about the Montgomery Bus Boycott expand their vocabulary. Students worked to develop word families by brainstorming synonyms for key vocabulary words like prejudice, segregation, and integration. For the word wheel activity, students reported synonyms they found either by working with partners or independently using dictionaries and thesauruses. The teacher reflected that this helped make the important words more understandable and engaging for English language learners. Next time, the teacher plans to have lower-level English learners take a more active role in the activity.

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210 views3 pages

Vocabulary Wheel for ELLs in ELA

The teacher used a word wheel strategy to help 8th grade students learning about the Montgomery Bus Boycott expand their vocabulary. Students worked to develop word families by brainstorming synonyms for key vocabulary words like prejudice, segregation, and integration. For the word wheel activity, students reported synonyms they found either by working with partners or independently using dictionaries and thesauruses. The teacher reflected that this helped make the important words more understandable and engaging for English language learners. Next time, the teacher plans to have lower-level English learners take a more active role in the activity.

Uploaded by

rim
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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RETELL Strategy Implementation in the Classroom

Teacher Eileen Lannan


Content Area /
Grade Level ReadingELA - 8th grade
Unit
(Topic or Skill) Civil Rights – Montgomery Bus Boycott
Content Objectives Students will understand the impact average individuals can have on important
public policy issues in the U.S.
Language Objectives Students will expand their vocabulary by developing word families using synonyms.
Level 3 - Students will work with a partner to brainstorm synonyms for prejudice,
segregation and integration, and report out, orally.
Level 4 – Students will complete the word wheel using the internet and/or thesaurus and
write their responses on index cards and report out orally.
Strategy
(Name or Type) Word Wheels
Brief explanation of
Word Wheel (Vocab) Using the vocabulary word, find as many synonyms as you
how the strategy was can.
used
Word Wheel – Prejudice, Segregation & Integration

Prejudice: dislike, hate, injustice, unfairness, intolerance, bigotry, bias, unequal


treatment, discrimination.

Segregation: Separate, isolate, apart, not together, spaced out, excluded.


Integration: add, combine, mix, put together, incorporate, join.

Reflection: How and Taking time to analyze important words is critical to overall understanding of text.
why was the strategy This strategy helped make words understandable by finding smaller words that
effective? What are related or mean the same thing. The ELLs are seeing the words, hearing the
might you change for words, talking about the words, and writing the words. This strategy of finding
next time? synonyms or related words for the vocabulary made the content comprehensible
because the words directly relate to the theme of the social justice unit. There are
more words to be studied, but this is a good start. This word wheel strategy helped
the ELL’s to become familiar with three important vocabulary words and other
words that were not necessarily vocabulary words, but in the word family. The
synonyms made it easier to understand the vocabulary words. In addition, the
strategy got everyone brainstorming synonyms. It was fun for the ELLs. The more
enthusiastic the teacher is, the more fun it becomes for the students. It got a little
competitive and some ran to get dictionaries and thesauruses’ to be the first to find
some similar word. Sometimes the lower level ELLs allow the higher level ELLs to
do their work for them. I know they have to rely on each other a lot, but next time I
would like to see the lower level ELLs take a more active role in their learning. I
think I would raise expectations for all ELLs.

**See materials and resources on the following pages.**


Word Wheel Example: Below

Segregate isolate
Segregation

Separate Apart

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