My students and I look forward to beginning each week of school with a new episode from The Character Tree. I’ve created several routines with the character education video lessons, one of which is teaching specific character trait vocabulary. I love incorporating interactive writing in my instruction and introducing new vocabulary provides a great opportunity to do so. Here’s how I use interactive writing.
1. I created a character tree in my classroom and as the year progresses, we add the traits we’ve learned to our tree. I begin the process of interactive writing by having my kids repeat the character trait out loud, for example, they’d repeat “kindness”. Then, we count the syllables of the word by clapping as we say each word part aloud.
2. Next, I select a specific phonics skill my class is working on. For example, if we were focusing on initial sounds in phonics I’d have my students say just the initial sound of the word and ask them to find and point to the letter that makes that sound on our class alphabet chart. I’d then invite a student to come up and write the first letter on our blank character trait card. The rest of the class would write the letter in the air with their finger. Then, I’d write the rest of the word since my focus for the interactive writing lesson is on initial sounds. If you teach first grade or if it is later in the year in kindergarten, you could have your students help with writing the medial and final sounds too. Or, if the character trait is a word with a digraph or blend that could be another focus to have your students help you with.
3. After the new character trait is written I stick up the card onto our character tree. This allows me and my students the opportunity to continue to refer to the traits we’ve learned about. Being able to refer to the traits has helped my students incorporate character trait vocabulary into their daily conversations. A few of my students refer to our character tree during writing workshop time and use the character trait words in their writing too!
You can replicate these interactive writing steps for any content-specific vocabulary you introduce students to. Interactive writing is a great way to teach new vocabulary to students!
Grab the blank cards I use to try this interactive writing routine out in your own classroom.
