Vocabulary Graphic Organizer for Grades 3-5

If you’re looking for an in-depth vocabulary graphic organizer that appeals to grades 3-5, I’ve got you covered!

Teaching younger grades? Try our Comic Strip Vocabulary Words printable.

*This post contains affiliate links.

This free vocabulary graphic organizer is for subscribers only. If you’re a subscriber, login here with the most current password. If you’re not a subscriber, subscribe here or enter to email for the freebie to subscribe.

Things to Remember When Teaching Vocabulary

1. Pick words that learners will experience across multiple content areas. For example, the word isosceles is a term that tends to be used just in the math book, while divide applies to other settings more readily.

I thought about providing a printable vocabulary list for grades 3-5, but I felt that could be too restricting. Instead I created a list of common prefixes, suffixes, roots, and stems that are often found in the vocabulary words we choose for our learners.

If you teach the meaning of these common word parts when teaching vocabulary, learners can begin to apply these words parts to other words, too. This expands their vocabulary by leaps and bounds!

Here are some great resources to help you pick and teach vocabulary words:

Bringing Words to Life by Beck, McKeown, & Kucan – A fantastic book for learning about HOW to teach vocabulary.
The Reading Teacher’s Book of Lists by Kress and Fry – This book is LOADED with great lists, including vocabulary lists of high-utility content words
Words their Way by Bear, Invernizzi, Templeton, & Johnston – Find great word lists for prefixes, suffixes, Greek roots, and Latin stems in the back of the book.
A children’s dictionary – We have an old McGraw-Hill dictionary, but I also have seen and like Scholastic Children’s Dictionary If you really want to dive deep into word study, consider buying an etymology dictionary for yourself. This can help you determine word origins.

2. Teaching vocabulary is more than just teaching the definition. Read more about this in my post, Teaching Vocabulary without Dictionaries.

3. Remember your end goal. Vocabulary is a tool we can use that leads to better reading comprehension and more expressive, descriptive writing.

Vocabulary Graphic Organizer for Grades 3-5

I share a comic strip vocabulary page and a Wow! Words chart that you can most certainly use. But with my 3rd and 4th grader, I wanted a vocabulary graphic organizer that would appeal to them and take them deeper into a word’s meaning.

On the vocabulary graphic organizer, I’ve included:

1. A place to write the word up at the very top. This way, learners can keep a notebook of these pages in alphabetical order. Because it’s up at the top, learners can find it quicker.

2. An area for learners to look up the word in the dictionary. Then they need to write the definition in their own words. The second part of this is VITALLY important. When learners can internalize the definition and paraphrase the definition, they’ve made it their own.

3. A spot to tell what part of speech it is, which can be found in the dictionary.

4. There’s also a spot to tell if it comes from another language. Technically pos is a Latin stem, but we aren’t ready for stems and roots just yet in her word work. This experience with her made me realize it would be helpful to have a page WITHOUT this box. So, the download also has a vocabulary page without this box.

4. A place to break the word apart into prefix, base/root, and suffix. All three parts may not apply to every single word. And once again, if she were older, it might look more like: prefix=dis, root=pos, suffix=able.