Word Collectors

The new Common Core standards emphasize text complexity and rich vocabulary.  The Daily 5 / CAFE frameworks also embraces expanding vocabulary as one of it's major strategy subheadings.  As we have interactive read alouds and shared reading in class, we keep our ears tuned to new vocabulary words.  We have collected a few interesting words so far.  I wanted the kids to have their own word collectors that they could add to as they find interesting words in their own reading, while also adding words that we find during our class read alouds.  I gave every child a personal word collector to keep in their writer's toolbox folder.  The word collector is two pages front to back so the kids have room to write words and meanings.

My wonderful teaching assistant designed a large word collector out of poster board, using the same layout (front to back) and graphics as the student word collectors.  I am able to model writing new vocabulary words in the class word collector as I read stories to the children.  The students have full ownership of their personal word collector, deciding which words to add and when to add them.

Feel free to download the student word collector (My Word Collector) and class word collector graphic (Our Word Collector) for your students to use.