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How to Build
Vocabulary Lesson Plans

These pages are filled with the building blocks of excellent vocabulary lesson plans. Here you will find useful word lists, quizzes, tests, and activities for teaching vocabulary. To take full advantage of the free content of this site, simply explore these pages.

Choose a Latin Root!

It all starts with our focus on one Latin root word per week. From that one word will come a dozen or more English derivatives.

Nothing is more important than the process of discovering these derivatives. Instead of learning random words, you will focus your vocabulary lesson plan on one Latin root per week.

The outcome from this focused study is the explosion of new, valuable, related vocabulary words that are easier to use and remember. Try new vocabulary strategies with each new root word.

Think of each new list as an entire family of words. They all come from the same stock, so to speak.

First you meet a verb, then a noun, then an adjective. Suddenly there’s a compound verb, an abstract noun, and an adverb, all part of the same extended family!

Learn to recognize them all. Then learn to use them well. Make each word your own. Start with culpa, culpae.

Do a Puzzle, Play a Game!

For each new list, have a little fun coming to know each member of the new word family. Find opportunities for puzzles and games such as word-finds and crosswords, hangman and battleship, and Jeopardy-style challenge boards.

Take a Quiz!

Sometimes a quiz can be used to assess how many words you or your students already know. Then again, if taken again after a week of discovery, a quiz can be a lot more satisfying.

It’s fun to prove what you’ve learned. And because a students must encounter a word up to 70 times before that word is mastered, it is important to quiz and quiz again.

Take a Test!

After a full week of using our vocabulary lesson plans, take a test to see how well you have internalized both meaning and usage. Many words have several meanings, and many derivatives have several related words that will test and expand your skill in memory.

Take a test as often as you like, until you have mastered the list. Then, off to the next Latin Word of the Week!