Inquiry Update - Building Vocabulary Term 3

Over the last few weeks, I have been looking into building student vocabulary in order to help their progress in both reading and writing. Sight Word Bingo has been an almost daily game and I have noticed students recalling these in their reading. I have also started playing a game called "We are going on a picnic". In this game we each go around the circle adding something to our picnic basket. As we go around the circle, the students have to retain more and more words. The main reason behind this activity was getting students to learn to be able to retain and then recall words and information. I had found in writing time, that even though we created brainstorms and sung sentences, they often were not recalling this after - as this is a new addition to our class games I am yet to find out how successful it will be. However, I have already noticed a growth in confidence in our quieter students who don't always share their ideas on their own - in the Picnic game they have been really quick to grasp the concept and excelled - this in turn has really grown their willingness to join in.