Vocabulary Sites to Help Teach Common Core

This week my reading group will be diving into a fictional story with some very challenging vocabulary and text.  Throughout the week, I plan to use some vocabulary activities to aid in building background knowledge and understanding.

The Common Core State Standards require students to work with vocabulary in many ways.  Take a look:

To make sure my students are able to meet the standards, I am planning on using the following sites to help them develop the necessary skills:

#1 Wordsift - This site will create a word cloud from text and then adds imagery to build knowledge.  It can also sort words by subject area and has a work area to create a "word poster".  I have made a video tutorial showing how I plan to use this site:


#2 Clean Dictionary - This site has a simple interface for quick reference.  I like that if a definition includes a word that students don't know, they can click the word to see its definition.

#3 Word Hippo - I am in LOVE with this site.  Look at all of the options:

I will be using Literature Circles and assigning roles to the students throughout the book.  If a student is assigned the role of vocabulary finder, this site will come in very handy! 

#4 Wordia - is a free games-based learning platform - built on the foundations of a dictionary - that blends word-based learning games with interactive video vocabulary.

Students can play games with random vocabulary words in single or multi- player platforms.

Students can search for a word, compete in games and teachers can track their students' progress.

Teachers can make games with the vocabulary words they choose.  It takes just a minute and the game can be shared with students.

I made two games for this week.

The teacher made games are simply students typing in the words on the screen, which is good for exposure to the words.  Games made by Wordia are more in-depth with meanings.

I hope these vocabulary resources are helpful to you as well.