Vocabulary Activity Overview—Grade 7
Week 4
Word Bank
1. adversary (n): an enemy or opponent
2. foresight (n): knowledge or insight gained by looking forward
3. exasperation (n): the act or instance of being irritated or provoked to a high degree
4. criteria (n): a standard of judgement for evaluating or testing something
5. subjective (adj): based on one’s personal opinion about something or someone
Activities
Word Analysis
 Word analysis is a strategy that allows students to develop a basic understanding of a new term.
 In the first box, students write the term and part of speech. In the second box, students write a
definition in their own words. In the third box, students create a memory cue (e.g., picture, symbol,
associated word, rhyming word, etc.). In the fourth box, students use the word appropriately in their
own sentence.
 Example:
Word
Definition
Memory Cue
Oven (n.)
kitchen appliance used
for baking or roasting
Sentence
We baked cookies
in the oven.
Word Linking
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Word Linking is a strategy that asks students to identify terms associated with their vocabulary words.
In the first box, students write the target vocabulary term. In each of the next five boxes, students write a word
that is associated with the target term. These could be synonyms, antonyms, or other terms that have similar
connotations.
Example:
1
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Word Families
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Word Families is a strategy that asks students to change the parts of speech of words. This helps students
understand the relationships between words with similar meanings and can help students determine correct
words to choose when writing sentences.
Students will put the target vocabulary term in the appropriate box (verb, noun, adjective, person), and fill in the
remaining boxes in that row by appropriately changing the word’s part of speech.
Example:
Verb
Noun
Adjective
Person
employ
employment
employed
employer
employable
employee
Creating Similes
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Creating similes is a strategy that allows students to create similes using the target words. The similes
have to show that the students understand the words’ meanings. A simile is a comparison of two
things using the words “like” or “as”
Students will create a simile for each of the target vocabulary terms in the space provided. Then,
students will explain what is being compared in the simile.
Example: ferocious
The watch dog is as ferocious as a Bengal tiger.
The watch dog is being compared to a Bengal tiger. They are both ferocious.
Affixes
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Affixes are prefixes or suffixes added to a root word. Affixes can change the part of speech and/or meaning of a
term.
Students will identify the root word and affixes for each target vocabulary term. They will need to include the
meaning of any identified affixes. Not all words will have a prefix AND a suffix.
Example:
Word
Contender
Prefix—meaning
Root
contend
2
Suffix—meaning
er—one who
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