Our Dictionary

Beginning in September 2011, our cohort began to build an online collaborative illustrated dictionary for thirteen level one English language learners.  The dictionary serves a basic need of our students: they need a way to learn and retain new words.  In addition, the online dictionary is an ideal avenue for interdisciplinary collaboration among the teachers.  We assign words from six different subjects and also include words that students come across in their daily lives or in their independent reading.

Each dictionary entry consists of a vocabulary word, its part of a speech, a short definition, synonyms, an example sentence from the student’s own life, a visual, and a caption.  Students use online dictionaries, paper dictionaries, and textbooks to write definitions.  They also write original sentences based on their own experience.  In my language arts class, students then present their words to their classmates.  They know they will need to understand and defend their choices to their peers and teachers.

The beauty of the collaborative online dictionary is that it allows students and teachers to accomplish so many things while working on an authentic and useful learning tool.  For the students, they not only learn essential new vocabulary by creating entries, they also use their work as a daily resource.  Because the dictionary is cloud-based, once an entry is created, it is immediately accessible to all teachers and students with any device connected to the internet.

We continue to add words every day. I haven't counted, but the dictionary must be over 400 entries by now!