After reading the article "The vocabulary-rich classroom..." by Lane and Allen, I was really intrigued by the examples given of teachers using vocabulary in the classroom. Vocabulary is something that isn't always given a lot of attention, so I think it's a great idea to incorporate it into other activities. Vocabulary words are almost always included in science and social studies text books and this is also a great way to increase a students vocabulary. This being said, I think the way Mrs. Barker and Mrs. Rivas used vocabulary was really a great idea. By doing things with vocabulary that children enjoy and feel ownership of, they are going to learn more words in a smaller amount of time. This is something that none of my teachers really focused on when I was in elementary school and when I went to middle school I really struggled in English because I was a really good writer, but I used no new, interesting words. Teaching children new words not only increases their vocab, but makes them more confident in themselves that they can actually use those words and know what they mean. I saw this picture on Pinterest and it is a board that you would post in your classroom and when you want to ask the class about a vocab word, you can ask them to do their "fist to five" which allows you to see what they know about the word, and how many students know the word and how many don't. This is a quick gauge that can be used in everyday conversation in other subjects that allows you to quickly see what your students know without spending too much time talking about it. I think this would be a great way to incorporate vocab into the classroom.
Monday, July 30, 2012
Class Reading--July 31
After reading the article "The vocabulary-rich classroom..." by Lane and Allen, I was really intrigued by the examples given of teachers using vocabulary in the classroom. Vocabulary is something that isn't always given a lot of attention, so I think it's a great idea to incorporate it into other activities. Vocabulary words are almost always included in science and social studies text books and this is also a great way to increase a students vocabulary. This being said, I think the way Mrs. Barker and Mrs. Rivas used vocabulary was really a great idea. By doing things with vocabulary that children enjoy and feel ownership of, they are going to learn more words in a smaller amount of time. This is something that none of my teachers really focused on when I was in elementary school and when I went to middle school I really struggled in English because I was a really good writer, but I used no new, interesting words. Teaching children new words not only increases their vocab, but makes them more confident in themselves that they can actually use those words and know what they mean. I saw this picture on Pinterest and it is a board that you would post in your classroom and when you want to ask the class about a vocab word, you can ask them to do their "fist to five" which allows you to see what they know about the word, and how many students know the word and how many don't. This is a quick gauge that can be used in everyday conversation in other subjects that allows you to quickly see what your students know without spending too much time talking about it. I think this would be a great way to incorporate vocab into the classroom.
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Wow! What a great way to use fist-to-five! I will definitely use this in my classroom! You can find out what prior knowledge children have on the subject and even how confident they feel! I love it!
ReplyDeleteI love the activity you posted! I think it would be a great way to quickly assess your students knowledge. I think using activities like this will help students to learn and remember more words and add them to their vocabulary for later use.
ReplyDeleteI like the first-to-five idea! I think that having that poster up in the room all year long would be really helpful. and probably helpful in so many content areas as well. it could become a great metacognitive tool for the students to automatically begin to consider these 5 steps without being prompted.
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