Cloze Vocabulary Introduction

After reading the book Word Nerds by Brenda J. Overturf, Leslie H. Montgomery, and Margot Holmes Smith, I thought I'd try one of the strategies they mentioned. I began introducing all my vocabulary units with a cloze activity in the pocket chart. My kids loved it! I started by writing the vocabulary words on colored sentence strips, then asking them to show me what they know with hand signals: hands on head if you know all about the word, hands on ears if you've heard the word, hands on your lap if it's a brand new word. That little formative assessment gives me so much information to guide vocabulary instruction! We have a brief discussion of each word based on the signals they show me. Then I read the sentences written on white sentences strips with a blank where the vocabulary words should go. Together we talk through putting the words in the correct blanks. We complete a lot of other games and activities during the unit, but I began each unit the same way this year. I saw a lot of improvement in my firsties vocabulary compared to previous years. Here is an example of the cloze chart and 2 other activities from my Thanksgiving unit: