Vocabulary on Parade!

This lesson is way up there on my favorite's list!  I LOVE it, and the kiddos really get into it! Essentially, this bundle is inspired by "Miss Alaineus: A Vocabulary Disaster", and most of the lessons in the packet center around word explorations.  The culminating activity is the word parade.  Each child wears a costume to school and chooses a word to describe their costume.  I encourage them to think of a really challenging, precise, WOW word, and I've been so impressed by words that they have come up with in the past, like "hypochondriac" and "foliage"!!!  Seriously adorable!!!  My older files weren't quite as cute as I recalled, so this bundle was totally rebuilt from the ground up.  This time around, I added a little word work activity to build words with pumpkins, costume cards to practice generating descriptive words, and I created much prettier templates.  I feel so much better now!!!

I personally prefer to do this lesson around Halloween, because the kiddos typically have costumes at home.  I don't want parents to feel like they have to go out and buy anything, so I encourage the kids to wear their existing costume or to use materials that they already have at home.  If they already have the costume, then they just have to focus on coming up with a fabulous word to describe it and work on a mini-presentation of their word and definition.  Not too shabby!  Even though I could plan this lesson (technically) any time of the year, I prefer to do it around Halloween, not only because of the costumes, but also because some kids don't celebrate Halloween. At my old district, we always had Halloween Parties, and the kids dressed up in costumes.  Inevitably, I would have a student that didn't celebrate Halloween, and at times, those students were pulled from the party or didn't come to school that day.  I was able to navigate around this by having a Word Parade.  The kiddos still got to dress up... just like everyone else did... but they wore a costume to represent a word.  I changed the focus from Halloween to vocabulary, and made the Halloween Party our big Word Celebration.  We did our presentations during that time... then we ate a few snacks.  Of course, it could go the other way too, and the unit could be another way to celebrate the holiday.  It depends on the spin you want to put on it with your kiddos!  :)  I like having a seasonal file that easily fits into an intermediate classroom.  It's SO hard to make holiday lessons fit sometimes!  :)   If you're interested, you can check out the file HERE!  :)  It's on SALE for 20% off as part of the "Christmas in July Sale!"  If you want to get a head-start on the holidays, you may want to check out the sale link to check out files from my blogging buddies at Blog Hoppin'.  :)  Have a great day, friends!

Contents:
Title p.1
Directions p.2
Read Aloud Lesson Plan p.3
Tea Party Activity p. 4-9
Name Nouns Lesson Plan p. 10
Word Bracelets Lesson Plan p.11
Extra Lesson Ideas p.12
Photos p. 13
Vocabulary on Parade Parent Letter p. 14-15
Planning Sheet p. 16
Rubrics p. 17-21
Word Cards for Necklaces p. 22-25
Hallo-Words Word Work p. 26-35
Costume Words (Describing Lesson) p. 36-45
Thank You p.46