Iditarod Vocabulary Lesson with ICPro

The Iditarod is in full swing now and one teacher made good use of this current event using the book Woodsong by Gary Paulsen and InferCabulary Pro to teach her students. Here’s what Stephanie, a 5th grade learning specialist and teacher, said about her lesson:

We recently used InferCabulary Pro for an entire fifth grade level activity.  Our boys are “running” the Iditarod in teams of 4-5 boys. 

One of their checkpoint activities was to determine the definition for four of the words in Woodsong.  After viewing and listening to the six pictures and paired sentences on ICPro’s Basecamp screen, the teams then collaborated and wrote a working definition for the words. 

Here’s the word “futile” from Infercabulary Pro. It also displays captions and audio to give more information and context for the word.

The definitions were then submitted to the “judges” for a point value (1-3), which in turn determined how many checkpoints the team could advance for that day on a map of the Iditarod trail. 

There was great discussion among the teams, and much cheering when the correct definition was revealed through InferCabulary Pro. It was a great approach to introducing new vocabulary, allowing for visual support, as well as, small group collaboration and immediate feedback.

You can download one of the worksheets they used for this lesson here. Thanks, Stephanie, for sharing your lesson with us!

Often we teach vocabulary separately as an individual unit. Vocabulary is learned best in context using literature, social studies, science, and other academics in the classroom. These boys will never forget Stephanie’s lesson on the Iditarod and even better, they are learning vocabulary deeply in a variety of contexts.