Tuesday, September 17, 2013

Engaging and Exciting Vocabulary Lessons with Prezi

Learning a new vocabulary can be not only difficult, but boring!  Unless you have a background knowledge of the words being used, or an authentic experience to which you can attach these new meanings, it can be a long and tedious process to memorize new spellings and meanings.

With the free online tool Prezi, www.prezi.com, you can break free of the bonds of PowerPoint to create a spinning, eye catching, and attention grabbing visual presentation.  Check out the "Descriptive Words" Prezi below used to introduce adjectives to a group of 4th grade writers.  By breaking down the words based on the human senses they effective, students can then think about the adjectives they are using in their own writing.



Prezi isn't limited to only elementary topics or classrooms, it can also be used in any subject area or secondary grade level.  The example below demonstrates how a Social Studies class at the middle school level can introduce and review a new set of words for a unit about the Middle East.



Using Prezi is easy.  First set up an account at www.prezi.com with your @CanyonsDistrict.org email.  Then get started with one of the templates and add text boxes for each word.  You can spice it up a little with some images, add links, even videos from YouTube and other online media sites.

To get going with Prezi, check out their three step process at http://prezi.com/support/

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