assignment 3.1 word building

Want to create or adapt books like this? Learn more about how Pressbooks supports open publishing practices.

5.4 Building Your Vocabulary

Learning objectives.

• Recognize the importance of building your vocabulary.
• Master techniques for building your vocabulary.

Both leaders and advertisers inspire people to take action by choosing their words carefully and using them precisely. A good vocabulary is essential for success in any role that involves communication, and just about every role in life requires good communication skills. We include this section on vocabulary in this chapter on reading because of the connections between vocabulary building and reading. Building your vocabulary will make your reading easier, and reading is the best way to build your vocabulary.

Learning new words can be fun and does not need to involve tedious rote memorization of word lists. The first step, as in any other aspect of the learning cycle, is to prepare yourself to learn. Consciously decide that you want to improve your vocabulary; decide you want to be a student of words. Work to become more aware of the words around you: the words you hear, the words you read, the words you say, and those you write.

Do you have a lazy vocabulary? Wake it up with the “lazy speech” exercise.

Activity: Lazy Speech

Recruit a friend you spend a lot of time with. Give them an index card with the following words written on it and ask them to keep a tally of the number of times you say these words sometime when you are together for an hour or more. If you have a small recorder, give it to the person and ask them to record you at a time you are not aware of it.

• Ummm or Uhh

Include in this list any other words, including expletives, that you may be using without thinking.

Are there words you constantly overuse? Were you surprised at how often you used some of these expressions? Now that you are aware of the frequency you use certain expressions, what strategies can you use to control or substitute more articulate and expressive words for them?

Building a stronger vocabulary should start with a strong foundation of healthy word use. Just as you can bring your overuse of certain words to your conscious awareness in the previous activity, think about the kinds of words you should be using more frequently. Some of the words you might consciously practice are actually very simple ones you already know but significantly underuse or use imprecisely. For example, many students say he or she “goes” instead of he or she “says.” If you take it a step further, you can consider more accurate choices still. Perhaps, he “claims” or she “argues.” Maybe he “insists” or “assumes.” Or it could be that she “believes” or she “suggests.” This may seem like a small matter, but it’s important from both a reader’s and a writer’s perspective to distinguish among the different meanings. And you can develop greater awareness by bringing some of these words into your speech.

These habits are easier to put into action if you have more and better material to draw upon: a stronger vocabulary. The following tips will help you gain and correctly use more words.

• Be on the lookout for new words. Most will come to you as you read, but they may also appear in an instructor’s lecture, a class discussion, or a casual conversation with a friend. They may pop up in random places like billboards, menus, or even online ads!
• Write down the new words you encounter, along with the sentences in which they were used. Do this in your notes with new words from a class or reading assignment. If a new word does not come from a class, you can write it on just about anything, but make sure you write it. Many word lovers carry a small notepad or a stack of index cards specifically for this purpose.
• Infer the meaning of the word. The context in which the word is used may give you a good clue about its meaning. Do you recognize a common word root in the word? (Check Table 5.3 “Common Latin and Greek Word Roots” for common roots.) What do you think it means?
• Look up the word in a dictionary. Do this as soon as possible (but only after inferring the meaning). When you are reading, you should have a dictionary at hand for this purpose. In other situations, do this within a couple hours, definitely during the same day. How does the dictionary definition compare with what you inferred?
• Write the word in a sentence, ideally one that is relevant to you. If the word has more than one definition, write a sentence for each.
• Say the word out loud and then say the definition and the sentence you wrote.
• Use the word. Find occasion to use the word in speech or writing over the next two days.
• Schedule a weekly review with yourself to go over your new words and their meanings.

Table 5.3 Common Latin and Greek Word Roots

Where Have You Been All My Life?

The following are some fun ways to find new words:

• When you look up a word in the dictionary, look at other interesting words on the same page.
• Solve crossword puzzles.
• Play word games like Scrabble, Boggle, or Pictionary.
• Watch movies.
• Listen to speeches and attend lectures.
• Go to comedy clubs.
• Have discussions (not just casual conversations) with friends.
• Read some more.

Key Takeaways

• The best way to build your vocabulary is to read, and a stronger vocabulary makes it easier and more fun to read.
• Be aware of your own lazy vocabulary and try to avoid those words and expressions.
• Look for new words everywhere, not just in class readings.
• Before you look up a word in the dictionary, infer its meaning based on its context and roots.
• After you look up a word in the dictionary, write your own sentence using the new word. Say the word and definition out loud.
• Use the new word as soon as possible.

Checkpoint Exercises

Which words do you habitually overuse? Do your friends overuse the same words? How can you collaborate to correct that overuse?

__________________________________________________________________

During the course of the day, find five new words in five different places. What were those words, and where did you uncover them?

What do the words “manuscript,” “scribe,” and “scribble” have in common? Can you detect the same root in these words?

What do you think the root means?

College Success Copyright © 2015 by University of Minnesota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

Session 3: Building Knowledge of Vocabulary

Citation and embed code.

Materials:  You will need to bring poster paper and markers for LA 3.5. 

In this session several of the activities ask them to teach each other about the understandings they developed in their homework. If the presentation by teachers runs long skim these as you prepare so that you can think of which might be shortened or eliminated. You could combine LA 3.3 and LA 3.4. 

LA 3.1 (10 min): Sharing My Learning and Professional Development . They do the same thing as last week, only now they need to think about their learning of language and literacy development.  

LA 3.2 (40 min): Presentation on SEP. The teacher group assigned to teach about Language and Learning Development will present. (Last week because of the teacher centers we only allowed 35 minutes--but this week we set aside 40 min.) After the presentation, the class members should be able to answer this question: How can I include Language and Literacy Development in my MSDLAs and my teaching so all learners have access? Have teachers share quickly their answer. 

LA 3.3 (20 min): Considering Text Modification and Vocabulary Learning in Making Content Comprehensible. In small groups, teachers will discuss how they have applied ideas from SIOP ch. 3 and 4 and share how it went. Then they need to discuss what they learned about vocabulary, text modification, contextualization, and language and learning to design supports for students. After a brief discussion time, ask them to share out things they talked about, what they wonder about, and ahas.  

LA 3.4 (15 min): Learning to Attend to Vocabulary in Making Concepts Comprehensible. In the same groups, they  discuss what they learned from watching the video and reading the article from homework. They can use their notes to share things that rang true to them, things new to them, and things they had questions about. Together they should try to answer each other’s questions. Communicate their thinking about how they want to modify text and how they will teach the vocabulary needed in their MSDLAs. (direct instruction of words, using a glossary, or interaction requiring the use of vocabulary.  

LA 3.5 (40 min): Sharing Your Learning about Vocabulary in the Texts of your Discipline. Group teachers in fours according to the corpus study they read for homework.  In the group there should be one person representing each of the contents of the corpus studies. In this group, they share information from their studies and identify principles they can use to guide vocabulary instruction. The group will make a poster of the principles they dentified to hang in the room and everyone participates in a gallery walk to glean ideas from the work of others.  

LA 3.6 (30 min): Building Strategies and Techniques and Techniques for Developing Academic Language. The teachers working in their group of four  read the summarized article by Kate Kinsella about building academic vocabulary in reading and writing. They need to answer the bulleted list of questions in the directions (#2). Together, they will create their own sentence frame appropriate to their content area and consider how to make this kind of frame a regular part of their teaching. Have them hand in their sentence frames.   

LA 3.X: Consulting with the Facilitator on Presentation—Challenging Activities. W ork with this group as they consider how to teach Challenging Activities to the rest of the class. Remind them that they have 40 minutes to present, and students need to be able to answer this question: How Can I attend to challenging activities so all learners have access?   

HW 3.1: Reflection on My Practice in Developing ELs’ Content and Language Proficiency. This is the weekly reflection homework, but focuses on Language and Literacy development for ELs.  

HW 3.2: Learning Teaching through Multi-media Cases and Expert Perspectives. Teachers watch the teacher they selected to watch for study challenging activities. They use the worksheet provided to take notes from the videos and all the perspectives. They need to identify 3 ahas to share next week.  

HW 3.3: Considering Text Modification and Vocabulary Learning in Making Content Comprehensible. Teachers  read ch. 5 and 6 from Making Content Comprehensible. They fill in the answers to the questions provided in the reading guide. They turn in the note sheet next week, and need to prepare to share something they tried based on this reading.    

HW 3.4: Developing Language Objectives. Teachers need to read an article from Colorin Colorado they click the link  in the homework activity. Call attention to the website Colorin Colorado so they know that it’s a really good place to go to learn specifics about teaching ELs. They click on the worksheet and answer the questions there. They need to bring this to the next session.   

HW 3.5: Reviewing Knowledge about Text Structures. They review a video on text structure from the literacy course and they need to think about corpus studies, developing academic language and designing MSDLAs. There is a link in the directions that gives them all they need to know to access the video. They take notes about the ideas they found interesting, new insights, and adjusting or modifying texts.  

HW 3.6: Exploring Teaching Strategy Marketplaces. For this homework, before they leave session 3 within each group, Teachers need to assign each member of their group to read half of the strategies in each of the two marketplaces (from assessment and literacy). Two people are assigned to read half of the comprehension marketplace, and the other two read the other half of the assessment marketplace (They have studied more intensely the assessment marketplace in Assessment and they will study the comprehension marketplace more thoroughly in the Literacy course. This is another example of strategic redundancy). There are links in the marketplace documents.  As they read through the activities, they each identify 2 strategies they would like to use in their teaching or the MSDLA assignment. The ones they choose should be something new for them. Then they select one and create a flyer persuading peers to use a strategy from the 2 they selected and bring it to class next week.  

HW 3.7: Exploring Funds of Knowledge. The facilitator assigns everyone in the class one of the chapters from the Funds of Knowledge book—7, 8, 9, 10. After each person reads their assigned chapter, they need to make a graphic organizer—there is a good website link for them to peruse if they need an idea for the graphic organizer. In the second part of the assignment, they select one of their own students and consider the student's potential funds of knowledge that the teacher could integrate into their teaching. Bring the graphic organizer to class in session 4.  

ESL001: Elementary English as a Second Language

Vocabulary Building Practice

The activities below give you the opportunity to find out how well you understand vocabulary-building strategies. If you have a difficult time recognizing these strategies, you may return to review the information in the Let's Study section and then try these practice activities again.

Use the context to figure out the meaning of the underlined word.

Building words

Common Core Standards: Grade 3 Language , Grade 4 Language

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.L.3.1, CCSS.ELA-Literacy.L.4.1

This worksheet originally published in English Made Easy Key Stage 2 for ages 9 to 10 by © Dorling Kindersley Limited .

Related worksheets

Perfecting plural nouns, big, bigger, biggest (3rd grade), verb machine, connectives.

Yes! Sign me up for updates relevant to my child's grade.

Please enter a valid email address

Thank you for signing up!

Server Issue: Please try again later. Sorry for the inconvenience

Rubric Best Practices, Examples, and Templates

A rubric is a scoring tool that identifies the different criteria relevant to an assignment, assessment, or learning outcome and states the possible levels of achievement in a specific, clear, and objective way. Use rubrics to assess project-based student work including essays, group projects, creative endeavors, and oral presentations.

Rubrics can help instructors communicate expectations to students and assess student work fairly, consistently and efficiently. Rubrics can provide students with informative feedback on their strengths and weaknesses so that they can reflect on their performance and work on areas that need improvement.

How to Get Started

Best practices, moodle how-to guides.

• Workshop Recording (Fall 2022)
• Workshop Registration

Step 1: Analyze the assignment

The first step in the rubric creation process is to analyze the assignment or assessment for which you are creating a rubric. To do this, consider the following questions:

• What is the purpose of the assignment and your feedback? What do you want students to demonstrate through the completion of this assignment (i.e. what are the learning objectives measured by it)? Is it a summative assessment, or will students use the feedback to create an improved product?
• Does the assignment break down into different or smaller tasks? Are these tasks equally important as the main assignment?
• What would an “excellent” assignment look like? An “acceptable” assignment? One that still needs major work?
• How detailed do you want the feedback you give students to be? Do you want/need to give them a grade?

Step 2: Decide what kind of rubric you will use

Types of rubrics: holistic, analytic/descriptive, single-point

Holistic Rubric. A holistic rubric includes all the criteria (such as clarity, organization, mechanics, etc.) to be considered together and included in a single evaluation. With a holistic rubric, the rater or grader assigns a single score based on an overall judgment of the student’s work, using descriptions of each performance level to assign the score.

Advantages of holistic rubrics:

• Can p lace an emphasis on what learners can demonstrate rather than what they cannot
• Save grader time by minimizing the number of evaluations to be made for each student
• Can be used consistently across raters, provided they have all been trained

Disadvantages of holistic rubrics:

• Provide less specific feedback than analytic/descriptive rubrics
• Can be difficult to choose a score when a student’s work is at varying levels across the criteria
• Any weighting of c riteria cannot be indicated in the rubric

Analytic/Descriptive Rubric . An analytic or descriptive rubric often takes the form of a table with the criteria listed in the left column and with levels of performance listed across the top row. Each cell contains a description of what the specified criterion looks like at a given level of performance. Each of the criteria is scored individually.

Advantages of analytic rubrics:

• Provide detailed feedback on areas of strength or weakness
• Each criterion can be weighted to reflect its relative importance

Disadvantages of analytic rubrics:

• More time-consuming to create and use than a holistic rubric
• May not be used consistently across raters unless the cells are well defined
• May result in giving less personalized feedback

Single-Point Rubric . A single-point rubric is breaks down the components of an assignment into different criteria, but instead of describing different levels of performance, only the “proficient” level is described. Feedback space is provided for instructors to give individualized comments to help students improve and/or show where they excelled beyond the proficiency descriptors.

Advantages of single-point rubrics:

• Easier to create than an analytic/descriptive rubric
• Perhaps more likely that students will read the descriptors
• Areas of concern and excellence are open-ended
• May removes a focus on the grade/points
• May increase student creativity in project-based assignments

Disadvantage of analytic rubrics: Requires more work for instructors writing feedback

Step 3 (Optional): Look for templates and examples.

You might Google, “Rubric for persuasive essay at the college level” and see if there are any publicly available examples to start from. Ask your colleagues if they have used a rubric for a similar assignment. Some examples are also available at the end of this article. These rubrics can be a great starting point for you, but consider steps 3, 4, and 5 below to ensure that the rubric matches your assignment description, learning objectives and expectations.

Step 4: Define the assignment criteria

Make a list of the knowledge and skills are you measuring with the assignment/assessment Refer to your stated learning objectives, the assignment instructions, past examples of student work, etc. for help.

  Helpful strategies for defining grading criteria:

• Collaborate with co-instructors, teaching assistants, and other colleagues
• Brainstorm and discuss with students
• Can they be observed and measured?
• Are they important and essential?
• Are they distinct from other criteria?
• Are they phrased in precise, unambiguous language?
• Revise the criteria as needed
• Consider whether some are more important than others, and how you will weight them.

Step 5: Design the rating scale

Most ratings scales include between 3 and 5 levels. Consider the following questions when designing your rating scale:

• Given what students are able to demonstrate in this assignment/assessment, what are the possible levels of achievement?
• How many levels would you like to include (more levels means more detailed descriptions)
• Will you use numbers and/or descriptive labels for each level of performance? (for example 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 and/or Exceeds expectations, Accomplished, Proficient, Developing, Beginning, etc.)
• Don’t use too many columns, and recognize that some criteria can have more columns that others . The rubric needs to be comprehensible and organized. Pick the right amount of columns so that the criteria flow logically and naturally across levels.

Step 6: Write descriptions for each level of the rating scale

Artificial Intelligence tools like Chat GPT have proven to be useful tools for creating a rubric. You will want to engineer your prompt that you provide the AI assistant to ensure you get what you want. For example, you might provide the assignment description, the criteria you feel are important, and the number of levels of performance you want in your prompt. Use the results as a starting point, and adjust the descriptions as needed.

Building a rubric from scratch

For a single-point rubric , describe what would be considered “proficient,” i.e. B-level work, and provide that description. You might also include suggestions for students outside of the actual rubric about how they might surpass proficient-level work.

For analytic and holistic rubrics , c reate statements of expected performance at each level of the rubric.

• Consider what descriptor is appropriate for each criteria, e.g., presence vs absence, complete vs incomplete, many vs none, major vs minor, consistent vs inconsistent, always vs never. If you have an indicator described in one level, it will need to be described in each level.
• You might start with the top/exemplary level. What does it look like when a student has achieved excellence for each/every criterion? Then, look at the “bottom” level. What does it look like when a student has not achieved the learning goals in any way? Then, complete the in-between levels.
• For an analytic rubric , do this for each particular criterion of the rubric so that every cell in the table is filled. These descriptions help students understand your expectations and their performance in regard to those expectations.

Well-written descriptions:

• Describe observable and measurable behavior
• Use parallel language across the scale
• Indicate the degree to which the standards are met

Step 7: Create your rubric

Create your rubric in a table or spreadsheet in Word, Google Docs, Sheets, etc., and then transfer it by typing it into Moodle. You can also use online tools to create the rubric, but you will still have to type the criteria, indicators, levels, etc., into Moodle. Rubric creators: Rubistar , iRubric

Step 8: Pilot-test your rubric

Prior to implementing your rubric on a live course, obtain feedback from:

• Teacher assistants

Try out your new rubric on a sample of student work. After you pilot-test your rubric, analyze the results to consider its effectiveness and revise accordingly.

• Limit the rubric to a single page for reading and grading ease
• Use parallel language . Use similar language and syntax/wording from column to column. Make sure that the rubric can be easily read from left to right or vice versa.
• Use student-friendly language . Make sure the language is learning-level appropriate. If you use academic language or concepts, you will need to teach those concepts.
• Share and discuss the rubric with your students . Students should understand that the rubric is there to help them learn, reflect, and self-assess. If students use a rubric, they will understand the expectations and their relevance to learning.
• Consider scalability and reusability of rubrics. Create rubric templates that you can alter as needed for multiple assignments.
• Maximize the descriptiveness of your language. Avoid words like “good” and “excellent.” For example, instead of saying, “uses excellent sources,” you might describe what makes a resource excellent so that students will know. You might also consider reducing the reliance on quantity, such as a number of allowable misspelled words. Focus instead, for example, on how distracting any spelling errors are.

Example of an analytic rubric for a final paper

Example of a holistic rubric for a final paper, single-point rubric, more examples:.

• Single Point Rubric Template ( variation )
• Analytic Rubric Template make a copy to edit
• A Rubric for Rubrics
• Bank of Online Discussion Rubrics in different formats
• Mathematical Presentations Descriptive Rubric
• Math Proof Assessment Rubric
• Kansas State Sample Rubrics
• Design Single Point Rubric

Technology Tools: Rubrics in Moodle

• Moodle Docs: Rubrics
• Moodle Docs: Grading Guide (use for single-point rubrics)

Tools with rubrics (other than Moodle)

• Google Assignments
• Turnitin Assignments: Rubric or Grading Form

Other resources

• DePaul University (n.d.). Rubrics .
• Gonzalez, J. (2014). Know your terms: Holistic, Analytic, and Single-Point Rubrics . Cult of Pedagogy.
• Goodrich, H. (1996). Understanding rubrics . Teaching for Authentic Student Performance, 54 (4), 14-17. Retrieved from   
• Miller, A. (2012). Tame the beast: tips for designing and using rubrics.
• Ragupathi, K., Lee, A. (2020). Beyond Fairness and Consistency in Grading: The Role of Rubrics in Higher Education. In: Sanger, C., Gleason, N. (eds) Diversity and Inclusion in Global Higher Education. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore.