Limited vocabulary? Not for long—SAT Vocab quizzes coming for English II

It's weird to think that English II students' SAT vocabulary quizzes weren't my idea, but it's true; it actually was a request during my first year at TAPA from a student who wanted to better be prepared for one of the most important tests of their lives. I did a little bit of research, found a pretty cool list of 100 good vocab words, and ended up giving it to English II students every fall.

Now, in an effort to push myself and my students, I've changed the list a little bit, removing a few, adding some more, and ultimately raising the number to 170. This will be a weekly quiz for English II students, first thing every Monday and Tuesday. However, I've also developed a new way of better assisting in your learning as well. Here's the new plan:

1. Download the list. It's a PDF, so I would suggest saving it to GoodReader and possibly Dropbox. Also, if you're using a program like Evernote, I'd be willing to email you a plain text file so you can easily view offline.
   
   
2. Create a visual SAT (vSAT) blog entry. Every week, by Monday, create a blog entry with all the following information:
   
   

• The vocabulary word (spelled correctly!)
• The part of speech (e.g. noun, verb, adjective, adverb)
• The definition of the word. (Do not just copy-and-paste from Dictionary.com—write your own definition that proves you understand.)
• A picture that reminds you of the word or the definition or helps you remember it, and
• A short paragraph explaining why the picture "makes sense."

 I made my own version of what I'd like your blogposts to look like—take a look at it here.




Notice I didn't just look up the word and insert the first picture I could find; I had good reasons for picking them. Do that.


3. Take the quiz. At the beginning of the week, first thing, we'll do a quiz over the 10 vocabulary words for that week. Expect the quiz to be either matching or fill-in-the-blank.
   
   
4. Don't forget... Your midterm and final exams will include quizzes over all the words we've studied so far, so don't just forget as soon as you take the quiz.

If you have any questions, I'll do my best to answer you as soon as possible. Just shoot me an email and I'll re-explain my expectations. Good luck!