We've been following news of schools across the country taking a creative approach to vocabulary learning and a celebration of language with vocabulary costume days or vocabulary parades.
When we came across this TuscaloosaNews.com video and news story about a vocabulary parade being staged at William Maxwell Elementary in Tuscaloosa, TN, we just had to share it with our community of word learners and word lovers.
It's great to see kids picking words that they feel some connection to, such as rainbow, sparkle, or basketball. We also love seeing kids begin to build relationships to words that likely presented more of a challenge, such as masquerade, languished, onomatopoeia, ambidextrous, punctual, hypochondriac, and radiant. Getting to know a word as deeply as you do when you're building a costume for it creates knowledge not just of that single word, but of the depth of understanding available for every word you may learn.
We're fairly certain that the student who built a costume for polychromatic is likely to remember its meaning for life. But she's also likely to remember that taking on an unusual and difficult word challenge opens up a world of word learning for the future.
Read tips and tricks for vocabulary parades and other project-based vocabulary learning ideas in Beyond Word Walls: Project-Based Vocabulary Learning and Beyond Word Walls 2: More Project-Based Ideas for Vocabulary Learning.