What if instead of approaching vocabulary as something they had to learn each week, they approached their words as something they needed to be able to teach others?

 

I’ve been fascinated by Jal Mehta and Sarah Fine’s book In Search of Deeper Learning lately. One of the chapters is about a project at one high school to explain advanced economics concepts in a student-friendly way.

 

The students created their own economics text. “A student-authored economic textbook – in which each spread features students defining an economic concept with a facing page illustrating that concept – was praised by President Clinton as one of the most lucid and incisive books on the subject that he had ever read” (49-50). You guys, I couldn’t love this idea more.

 

So how might you build it into your vocabulary instruction? Well, maybe your students create their own version of that economics textbook, with vocabulary words on one page and sketch notes or one-pagers explaining them on the connecting page. Or maybe they create a video channel for SAT-takers all over the world, posting new videos with new words every week of the year.

 

Then you let them know that you can share their digitized book, or their channel, with a group of over 7,000 Creative High School English teachers. So basically if it’s good, it could be used by many, many students