Word for Word - Vocabulary Across the Curriculum

The first thing that I noticed when reading Chapter 3 for this blog was how enjoyable and easy to read this text is! It’s finally, FINALLY a joy to read course content that I can actually understand.  Students text books should be model the exact same way so they can understand the information rather than merely read it.  I’m so excited to see a text book for education majors that models what is in the best interest for the students.

I love the “I Am” poems, it’s such an amazing way for students to use self expression and a variety of vocabulary words to create such a unique artifact of themselves.  I especially love the example in the book that talks about being Tiger Woods, but a more faithful version. I literally had to laugh out loud.  I found the first full page of text to be very beneficial to my reading.  I never knew that revisiting basic skills with struggling readers would just help fill gaps and not help the reader catch up! It makes sense that the students wouldn’t find the information valuable since they get the “watered down” version of material.  One question I have is: How can we hold struggling students to the same level as on grade level students without frustrating them? I wouldn’t want to water down the information and think it wasn’t important, but I don’t know how to approach students that reach a frustration level. Having a vast knowledge of vocabulary is also correlated with reading comprehension; this helps me a lot since my tutoring student has second grade comprehension level in the sixth grade.  Hopefully I’ll have some time to see how he does with vocabulary to determine if his lack of comprehension is due to his low vocabulary.  Comprehension is also influenced by other factors, but vocabulary seems to be a major driving point in effecting reaching his potential.  I plan on working with Malikio using a few vocabulary words correlating to the trade book to hopefully increase his comprehension of what he is reading.

I was so interested to read that students acquire an amazing 3,000 words a year! So many words for such tiny people.  I personally think that vocabulary should span from focusing on the curriculum that the students are learning and picking new and random words to challenge the students.  I feel like both have their place in the classroom and both can easily be conquered with the dedication of the students and teacher.  I was SO pleased to see a grey box labeled “The Benefits for ELL”! I learned a lot of this information on Friday during Senior Block’s professional development seminar.  We had two amazing guest speakers who taught us a lot about ELL students’ success rate and the proper strategies to use in certain situations.  What I found most interesting was how ELL students are sometimes misjudged because of their excellent use of social language.  Instructional language is crucial to any students’ success.  During the session we had with our guest speakers I also learned that is also necessary to let students speak in their native language and not forbid it.  It makes the students feel uneasy and the chapter specifically states that there needs to be a psychologically safe and motivating environment to learn.

Using self assessment of current knowledge was a pleasant surprise to see in this chapter as well.  Dr. Ramp just recently gave our class a self assessment of our current vocabulary knowledge to fill in before mid-terms.  It is SO refreshing to see our professors practicing what they preach.  I really like this form of assessment since it promotes an accountability factor when it comes to vocabulary.  It also gives the teacher an idea of where the student is and helps set goals for the end unit. 

When dealing with vocabulary instruction, professionals have agreed on four principles for effective instruction:

·         Be actively involved in word learning

·         Make personal connections

·         Be immersed in vocabulary, and

·         Consolidate meaning through multiple information sources

These principles helped me clearly understand what I need to do to help students learn at their best ability.  When students are actively involved they are more attentive and engaged.  This could mean having the students act out a skit using the word as a guide, make up a rap about the word, or use whole body movements to learn the word.  Using personal connections to vocabulary words is always helpful for students’ understanding.  Each student could find a way to incorporate the vocabulary word into a sentence that applies to them and they could share with the class.  Being immersed in vocabulary is truly important at all times, especially in the classroom.  When you use rich vocabulary the students find it second nature to continue using these words outside of school.  Consolidating the meaning of the word also helps the student get a clear meaning of what the word is and how it should be used.

A few of my favorite strategies at work are the word wall, expanding student vocabulary, and learning vocabulary as parts of speech.  I have always loved the idea of a word wall because it gives students a visual of the words that the class has covered and are on grade level.  This gives students a wonderful visual and support during writing.  My only concern with the word wall is compromising the students’ ability to spell on their own grade level independently.  One of my questions is – How do we provide support for vocabulary via word wall, but still keep students’ authentic  spelling intact? Expanding a student’s vocabulary is such an excellent practice since students generally feel comfortable with words that they know.  Something that I saw recently on Pinterest was a Dead List of commonly used words and suggestions for more vivid vocabulary for students to use in writing.  When students are provided with extra resources to help their need for new words they are more able to perform to the level that the teacher expects.

If you haven't checked out all of the amazing teaching ideas on Pinterest, you need to!
Fabulous ideas from fabulous educators.

Here is my education board if you want to take a look!
Brittlyn's Pinterest - Classroom Baord

Learning new vocabulary words as parts of speech is another approach that I enjoyed reading about.  I especially loved the “Vocabulary Jeopardy” that was introduced in this section, along with the visual with the shades of meaning.  I could imagine my own students being excited and anticipating their turn at this game.  This section also included how this could be beneficial to ELL students and the acquisition of the English language.

Learning vocabulary in all content areas is incredibly important – I love how this chapter broke down some of the major subject areas and how to teach specific to the content.  I especially enjoyed the concepts and ideas to teach the vocabulary within the subject in science and math.  Science and math are both my weaknesses personally and I need real help with ways to deliver content to the students.  One of the figures at the end of the chapter offered was a quiz me card of terms.  The student had to collect five signatures of adults who would quiz them of their vocabulary words. 

I enjoyed this chapter so much since I enjoy vocabulary and have a love for learning new words, I hope that we will continue to learn more strategies to help our future students!