Vocabulary Cartoons

What is a MNEMONIC?

• A memory aid

• In vocabulary cartoons, you will create a rhyming mnemonic and a visual mnemonic to help you learn a new vocabulary word

Rhyming Mnemonics

• A form of word association where you rhyme a word you want to learn with a word you already know.

• EX: Columbus sailed the ocean BLUE in fourteen hundred ninety-TWO

(This teaches the students the date that Christopher Columbus discovered America)

Visual Mnemonics

• For most people, it’s easier to remember pictures that are seen rather than sounds that are heard

• EX: when you know what a banana looks like and you hear the word, your mind automatically makes a mental picture of a banana

Making a picture with a new vocabulary word and a “sounds

like” word• Vocabulary word: PARRY• Since you do not know what this word means,

you try to come up with a rhyming (or “sounds like”) mnemonic that helps you

• then create a visual image of the “sounds like”

• PARRY:• Sounds like: PEAR (now you can visualize the

fruit)

Define the vocabulary word

• Next you need to find the definition of the vocabulary word

• You may need to determine its ROOT WORD first, in order to look it up

Create your sentence

• Now you have the new vocabulary word, its definition, and your “sounds like” word

• You are ready to create a visual mnemonic by creating a sentence that includes both your vocabulary word and the “sounds like” word

• This sentence should be something you can illustrate

VOCABULARY WORD: PARRY- to protect yourself from a blow; to avoid skillfully; to turn aside and evade

SOUNDS LIKE: PEAR

SENTENCE: The PEARS PARRIED each other’s fencing movements.

DIRECTIONS• Randomly select a vocabulary word from the basket• Write the word and page number down on your unlined white

paper (then return the word to the basket for the next class to use)

• Find the sentence in the story where your word is and copy it down

• Create a vocabulary cartoon with your word: vocabulary word, definition (DO NOT use a form of the word in the definition you write), “sounds like” word, sentence, and cartoon

• You may use the electronic dictionaries (please power them OFF when you put them away and treat them with respect)

• Color your cartoon• Don’t forget to write your name and class on your paper• Place your completed cartoon in your portfolio until I return. We

will place them around the classroom for others to view once I return.

• Read silently (your biography, preferably) if you have any remaining time (don’t forget to document the reading on your reading log)