Learning Blog # 5

This post refers to a reading from:

Richardson, J., Morgan, R., & Fleener, C. (2011). Reading to learn in the content areas. (8th ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth

 

Chapter 7: Teaching Vocabulary

 

This chapter is a very important one.  It helps teachers/future teacher understand how important vocabulary is to a child's learning and comprehension. 

 

 As I was reading, I was reminded of my practicum class from fall 2013.  This is because the second grade teacher was always very conscious of the vocabulary that her students came into contact with.  She always took into account word recognition when reading to her students.  For example- If she knew that she was going to read a book to the students, she would always review the book for "hard" or "tricky" words that the students may not have seen yet.  She would then write the word down so they could see it spelled out and tell them to listen for the word.  Once she got to the page with the "tricky" word, she would have students pronounce the word out loud and then try to guess what it meant (here she was teaching comprehension through developing their contextual knowledge, p. 173).  Then, she would explain the meaning of the word.  If they were reading the book by themselves, she would tell them to "watch out" for the word to warn them that she knew that they probably did not know the meaning and that it was okay.  She would then encourage them to look up the word in a dictionary to understand its meaning.  The teacher was very consistent with pointing out and explaining words that the students may have not seen.  It seemed to be very helpful to the students.

 

This chapter also talks about the importance of the students pronouncing new words (p. 173).  I think that not only knowledge of what a word means, but also being able to pronounce it is beneficial among elementary age students.  Within my practicum class from fall 2013, the teacher's second graders ran into the word "clamber" while reading a book.  The teacher explained to the students that the word is not pronounced clamBER but is pronounced claMMER.  The B is silent.  It took them a few days of pronouncing the word out loud to remember this.freaking  

 

I think that the scenario from this chapter on page 173 was interesting (the boy visiting a theme park and riding a ride called "Ribbault's Adventure").  The boy seemed to have associated the word "Ribbault" with the word "rabbit" because it looked similar.  He had no experience with the word "Ribbault".  Once he rode the ride and found out who Ribbault was, he was able to distinguish between the two words.  Ribbault had a new meaning and the boy had an experience with the word.  It is as if the words had to be connected to an experience for the boy to really understand that the words were different.        

 

An activity that the book suggests for the start of each chapter with elementary age students is to take a word inventory (p. 179).  Although this activity may be helpful for some teachers, I do not think that I would use it (or I don't think that I would use the one that they provide in the book in activity 7.2).  I do not like the smiley faces and sad faces that they use.  To me, a sad face could imply that the teacher is sad that she has to teach the student this word and a happy face could imply that she is happy because she does not have to teach the students this word.  It could make a student feel dumb or sad if they do not know a word.  If I used word inventories in my classroom, I would not use sad and happy faces.

 

I really love the poster that the book has on page 184 (activity 7.7, possible sentences).  This is a great way to get students to realize that they have heard these words before in a different context.  I also love the "dissect" mnemonic on page 189 (D-discover the word's context, I- isolate the prefix, S-separate the suffix, S- say the stem or root word, E-examine the stem or root word, C- check with someone, and T- try the dictionary).