4-Square Vocabulary Templates

Wondering how to help ELL students in your mainstream classroom? Start explicitly teaching academic vocabulary using these 4-square vocabulary templates.

This free product contains three templates.

Template 1: No labels-you can write in or have students write in labels.

Template 2: Labels for word, image, meaning, examples, and non-examples are included.

Template 3: Labels and small images that relate to the labels are included.

Suggested ways to use:

•Select the template that is appropriate for your students and lead them through the completion of the template with selected vocabulary word(s).

•Ask students to share what they included in the boxes.

•Avoid information overload: one to two words in a given day might be a reasonable amount.

•Use the blank template to write in your own prompts. Other commonly used ideas include:

Use the word in a sentence.

Synonyms/antonyms

Word families

Prefix/suffix

Parts of speech

•Use with interactive notebooks.

•Use as an interactive study tool; cover up the word in the middle and have students quiz each other to guess the word using information from the form.

•Use as a quiz or formative assessment; provide a student with a blank version with only the word in the center and have the student fill in the rest.

•Scaffold the activity for different learners; fill in some or all of the information and provide to students instead of having them fill in all the boxes.