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Building Schema

Read Time 2 mins | July 23, 2019 | Written by: Kylene Reed

What a busy last few weeks I have had with my family. I worked most of June, and was really looking forward to a little family time on our summer vacation! Last week, my husband and I took our teenage boys to New York City for a few days, and then rode the train to spend the last four days of vacation in Philadelphia. Disclaimer: We loved BOTH cities, but oh my gosh was it HOT and HUMID!! 😱

I wanted to share with you all some of my favorite places and how I am going to be bringing my experiences into my classroom this fall and throughout the new school year. If I am able to share these experiences and historical information to my students through my travels, then some kids, who will never have those opportunities, will at least get to learn a little more about these places. 

The first lesson that I am planning to use this September is brought to you from the the Liberty Bell Center at Independence Mall in Philadelphia, PA. The Liberty Bell was so interesting to learn about. While I was at the museum I was able to take multiple pictures of historical information and photos of this US symbol. The teacher in me never shuts off no matter where I am, and the first station I stopped at had this sign hanging above... notice the WORD REFERENTS!!!? They immediately jumped out at me, and my husband began to laugh as I was furiously taking pictures and telling him all my ideas of how I was going to use this in a lesson for my 6th graders!  Constitution Day would be the perfect time to fit in a great vocabulary and response to text lesson about the Liberty Bell and my travels to PA. 

assured experiences, vocabulary, word referents,

How easy would it be to have the students create a word referent chart with these two as the jumping off point? Every time I am teaching my students a new topic, I have them create a WR chart so that when they are writing  their own  response to the newly acquired information they can use the new vocabulary. 

Here are a few words that I jotted down to give you some ideas to create this in your class. Remember, students can do research or use a thesaurus to find appropriate words for the chart. 

                       assured experiences, vocabulary, word referents,

This is a photo of the bell template with translations of the word "Liberty" written on it. I am going to recreate this idea by having my students write what liberty means to them on their own individual bells to hang in our hallway! 

WHERE ARE YOU TRAVELING THIS SUMMER???

Be sure to bring your experiences into your classroom. You never know when you might give your students a little bit of knowledge and schema on a topic that they will use again later in their life.

Spread the love for reading and writing in everything you do!

Kylene Reed