Just a Bunch of Awesome Teaching Ideas

I love teaching vocab. Not just shoving a word list at my kids and expecting them to memorize it. That's pretty much how I learned vocabulary in Junior High, and it really doesn't work. Vocabulary instruction is most effective when we get kids actually USING the words. Repeating them. Making connections between the words and the world around them. Using popular music to teach vocabulary does just that. Plus, it's super fun. At the bottom of this post, I link to ten vocabulary words from Disney songs. Here are three ways to use these words in your classroom: 1. Write the word on the board and tell the students to listen intently to the lyrics in the song you are about to play. Tell them to raise their hand when they hear the word in the song. Have them write the few lines that the word appears in and encourage them to determine meaning based on the context clues of the song. 2. Have students draw a picture that represents the word as it appears in the song. For e