8th graders in Mrs. Kiick’s ELA classes at Union Middle School are creating Semantic Maps of their Vocabulary Workshop terms. The goal is to make the new terms real to the students and not just focus on memorizing the words. Not only are they are writing their assigned terms in the center of their posters, including definitions, parts of speech, synonyms and antonyms from their workbooks, but they are also brainstorming their own subcategories and ideas/ examples to illustrate real life applications of the new words. In the end, they will be more likely to use the new terms in speaking and writing, and recognize them when reading and listening! Lastly, their posters will be scanned into a slideshow to use as an additional study tool.
