Making Meaning - vocabulary development

Here's a great technique I learned from FOSS last week that work's really well at the end of a unit or simply to review a tough concept. We did this in a workshop after we had had several hands-on activities exploring these concepts.  I would NEVER do this from just a reading of a non-fiction piece.  After all, FOSS believes in "building conceptual meaning through experience."

First you write out several vocabulary words on sticky notes.  I would make four sets so that each table could work on it together.  You would also give each table a piece of chart paper.

Here is a suggested list:  air, gas, volume, molecules, pressure, copress, expand, push.

Directions:

1. Determine how the words/concepts are related.
2. Organize in groupings on chart paper.
3. Draw lines between related terms.
4. On the lines, write some words showing how terms are related.

Here are some examples of what we did at the workshop.

I really liked being able to move the sticky notes around because we continued to debate abou how we wanted to place them....

Hope you can use this!