Sunday, May 23, 2010
Classroom Strategies-Vocabulary Words
I really like Chapter 11 A Process for Teaching New Terms and Phrases. It reinforces what I am already doing in my classroom but it also gave me some great ideas. I agree that vocabulary words need to be words that the students will encounter in their reading. The vocabulary program I use introduces the words in a story or reading. First, we read the story together and the students highlight their new vocabulary words. Then they read it again and look for and underline context clues to help them understand their new word. Next, we go through the story as a class and stop/discuss and write each vocabulary word, syllables, what they think it means looking at context clues, and then write what it actually means. I then show a picture as we discuss each new word with the vocabulary word displayed in large font below the picture. It is displayed in the front of the room for the next 7 to 8 days . Studies show that students need more than 5 days for the dendrites in their brains to make the connection to learn new words. For the next 7 days the students have different activities to learn their new words. One activity is to use the word in a sentence and then draw a picture of the word to help them associate it with an image.(p126 imagery techniques) We also might make a brochure and different writing activities. This has helped my students learn new vocabulary words and also learn how to understand what a word means by looking for the context clues. They become more independent readers as they learn to master new words instead of skipping difficult words as they read.
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I like your lesson on vocabulary words and the way that you use different steps in getting familiar with new words. I thought it very useful to have the students reread the vocab word in the sentence, then highlight or write down any context clues in the sentence that would help them in understanding that word. We do this decoding process, but it is generally in a whole or small group setting. I like your way of having the students dig independently to gain insight. Thank you.
ReplyDeletedisplaying the words is key. i need to do that more. show it, show it, show it, say it, say it, say it... repeat, rinse, repeat.
ReplyDeletethis is the problem working with students. they don't have enough background knowledge to connect to. I soooo agree with you that they must learn the vocabulary in the context and USE it. If they don't use it, they can't really connect it to anything. Like me and my wife trying to learn Spanish. We bought the expensive "rosetta stone" but we didn't repeat, rinse, repeat. We know NO spanish.
ReplyDeleteI also think it is important for students to learn to find out what words mean in context. That is a great way for students to learn vocabulary words and also learn how to figure out what words mean as they are reading, a strategy all readers need.
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