Vocabulary Instruction In First Grade Social Studies

 My first social studies lesson this year will be based around the learning goal: I can show good citizenship. My first learning target or objective is for students to be able to explain why we need rules. I anticipate my students struggling with language such as citizen or responsible. In my pre-assessment for this unit many students verbally expressed that they did not know what the word citizen meant. Many students also did not know what responsible meant. I will be proactive about addressing these struggles. I will refer to the The Art and Science of Teaching / Six Steps to Better Vocabulary Instruction for addressing these vocabulary words. Morzano says 

   1. "Provide a description, explanation, or example of the new term. 2. Ask students to restate the description, explanation, or example in their own words. 3.Ask students to construct a picture, pictograph, or symbolic representation of the term. 4. Engage students periodically in activities that help them add to their knowledge of the terms in their vocabulary notebooks. 5. Periodically ask students to discuss the terms with one another. 6. Involve students periodically in games that enable them to play with terms." (Morzano, pg.1)

I will provide a description of the new term "citizen" in terms that my first graders can understand - a citizen is someone who lives in a community. For example, my students go to school in Woodsville, NH and Woodsville is the community we live in so we are all citizens of Woodsville. I will then ask my students if they can explain to me what a citizen is in their own words. We will also discuss what it means to be responsible at home school, and in the community. I will provide students with the base knowledge that being responsible means doing what we are expected to do and accepting the consequences of our actions. I will then have students do a stand up, sit down activity - standing up when I give an example of a person being responsible and sitting down when the person is not being responsible. This addresses #4 and engages students with an activity. They will also have time to turn and talk to the student next to them about how students are responsible.
In the article Content Area Vocabulary Learning it states, "Yet in too many cases, vocabulary instruction is isolated from other aspects of the instructional day, particularly in content area learning. It is far too common to assign students a list of words (usually technical terms) that will be used in a social studies or science unit and then ask them to look up words and write definitions so that they can then compose solitary sentences. This limited exposure to words and phrases in decontextualized situations has not proven to be effective, nor is it of a sufficient intensity"  (Douglas, Fisher & Nancy, Frey, 2014). This really stood out to me. I believe my social studies lesson incorporates vocabulary in an engaging and fun way for the students that provides them more with a teacher recited definition. 

Works Cited:

Morzano, R. (2009, September 1). The art and science of teaching / six steps to better vocabulary instruction. ASCD. https://ascd.org/el/articles/six-steps-to-better-vocabulary-instruction 

Douglas, Fisher & Nancy, Frey (2014). Content Area Vocabulary Learning. The Reading Teacher, 67(8), 594–599. doi: 10.1002/trtr.1258