Do you work on test-taking vocabulary with middle and high school students? Do you have middle or high school students that don’t do well on formal tests and assignments with open-ended questions? Are you spinning your wheels when working on academic or high stakes vocabulary? One way to have your interventions make a cross curricular impact is to work on the task words that are commonly found on tests and assignments! Once I started working on these task words, I was actually suprised by how many of my students don’t understand the differences among these high stakes vocabulary words!
Why work on task vocabulary?
- students face these vocabulary words in all academic areas,
- it can be a valuable review prior to high-stakes tests,
- you may have a student that does well with multiple choice questions but struggles with open-ended questions that contain the task words,
- there are nuanced differences between some task words, such as “describe” and “explain,”
- some test-taking vocabulary words are inter-related (compare/contrast) and students may not understand how they differ,
- while teaching task words is NOT the same as content mastery, it does give students a head start on answering the questions to SHOW mastery of content.
How can we teach test-taking vocabulary?
- start with choosing YOUR list of task words. Check out my 24 task words below. These are words that are commonly found in directions and standardized tests. I broke mine into two sections.
Then, decide on how to implement instruction of them. Since I do teletherapy, I use a pre-test to determine which words to teach and let the results of the pretest guide me. Brick and mortar SLP? You might want to do a bulletin board where you display the words or teach one section of the above words per semester, or include them in a word of the week activity. These also make great response to intervention or study skills group activities!
Therapy Activities for Test-taking Vocabulary!
Working on the definitions of test-taking vocabulary words definitely makes sense but I use definitions as a starting point. Here are some other ways you can help your students take a deeper dive into understanding these high-impact words:
- have your students find the task words on tests or assignments.
- use the test-taking vocabulary words in sentences,
- compare and contrast two high stakes vocabulary words,
- students write out their definitions of the words before you teach them and then refiine the definition after you’ve taken a deeper dive into the word,
- imagine that the high stakes vocabulary words were people! Students can draw them or do wanted posters on them! Song lyrics or mottos that reflect the word can be generated! For example, the motto for the word, “describe” might be “no detail is too small.”
Check out the motto, song lyrics and picture depicting the word “opinion” in the picture below.
Are you a teletherapist or doing distance learning?
Check out the preview video for my Power UP BOOM cards!
Hey, if you love BOOM cards, you might be interested in my BOOM cards for social skills!
I love using images that depict the high stakes vocabulary words and having students choose the images that best reflect the meaning of the word. For my “Power UP” Vocabulary words packet and Power UP BOOM cards, I developed images that depict each word. When students have to explain why they chose the image, that’s when the magic happens! You facilitate a greater level of understanding of the word!
Here’s a couple examples!
I hope you’re ready to help your students take a deep dive into high stakes vocabulary! Did you enjoy this content? Join my newsletter and get freebies and fresh content and lesson plans delivered to your inbox!
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