Keep this learning mode matrix handy when developing your new lessons http://library.thinkquest.org/C005704/content_hwl_learningmodalities.php3

For each new word, develop a way to introduce each word but incorporate components that address each of the different learning modes so each type of learner is included.

For example, WASH

Visual: picture of someone washing their hands

Auditory: phonetics to pronounce the word; sounds associated with washing your hands…have the students make the sound. As another responder pointed out, find appropriate songs….music seems to persist in the memory longer than other inputs.

Kinesthetic: carefully form the letters; then have them do the actions associated with washing their hands…can expand this to extend to before and after…and possibly link to other vocabulary works they’ve already had.

You can also expand the lesson to incorporate the 5-senses:

Seeing: what things do you see that tell you someone is washing their hands (direct association, and then things by indirect association)

Hearing: what sounds might you hear (when you don’t see what is happening) that tells you someone is washing their hands (again think of direct and indirect associations)

Touch: if you couldn’t see (e.g. a blind person), what sensations can you feel that tell you hand washing is taking place? (again, think of direct and indirect associations)

Smell/Taste: closely inter-related, but smell is more appropriate here…what smells would tell you (without being able to see) that hand washing was taking place? (and again, direct and indirect smells)

Of course, nothing will always work out perfectly to have a full matrix of data and activities….but this helps to reinforce how the brain works…storing many different aspects and features of common every day life…and then being able to reconstruct / remember / recall when even incomplete data sets are pieced together of past inputs.

May sound a bit on the high end for 2nd grade…but don’t sell them short…and at least this way, you have paved a way for students to be empowered to systematically construct a living working model of learning that can last them a life time.

Hope this helps. Best wishes in your endeavors.

“around the world”- a child challenges each classmate individually to get back to where his/her seat is, if answer is incorrect the child sits in the childs seat who got the answer right, while the correct child tries to get back to his or her seat by getting the vocabulary right

repeat….