Vocabulary

Most college students hear vocabulary and immediately start sweating about the GRE. Ask a student in kindergarten what vocabulary is and they will most likely look at you with a blank expression until you tell them that it is words they already know. Vocabulary is an extensive, ongoing task students add to during their entire academic career and beyond. We accumulate new words until the day we die. As teachers, we take on the daunting task of teaching vocabulary to students. With the right tools this can be done efficiently and in a way that turns your classroom into a vocabulary hotspot, where words are continually studied and learned.On the right is a great worksheet students can use when exploring vocabulary.  The Blachowitz and fisher article Vocabulary Lessons teachers some very useful tools for implementing usable vocabulary strategies in the classroom. Teacher should create a POSITIVE words learning environment. This can look like:

• puns in conversational lessons
• implementing scrabble/bananagrams as a center in the room
• allowing student to create their own word walls
• using the STAR method in vocabulary
• select, teach, activate, and revisit
• teach correct dictionary usage 

Luckily, The Lane & Allen reading The Vocabulary-Rich Classroom:Modeling Sophisticated Word Use to  Promote Word Consciousness and Vocabulary Growth added to the strategic maneuvers that allocate efficient vocabulary teaching. One piece from this reading really stuck out to me. This was the teacher that made jobs for her classroom, but as the year progressed, so too, did the job titles. No, the jobs did not change, just their names. For example a weather watcher become a meteorologist and so on. What a great way to teach vocabulary that doesn't outwardly require an outright lesson. I love teaching without the students catching on because the activity is so fun. This is perfect for classroom with low SES students. They are not getting any word conscious teaching at home, so why not go in overload at school? By keeping the lesson fun and permanently scheduled, these students can STILL learn many new words to add to their vocabulary, sometimes with incidental learning. 

On a more technological note, The Dalton and Grisham article eVoc Strategies: 10 Ways to Use  Technology to Build Vocabulary noted the importance of multiple word exposures in different contents. The best content being technology. Teach terminology that goes along with the electronics these students use every day. Vocabulary words like browser, website, and search can all become high frequency words EVEN in younger classrooms. Teacher must use technology to aid in vocab development in this day in age. Power-points made by students FOR students allows them to teach one another and really cement the lesson in their minds. Plus, what a great way to teach autonomy and vocabulary requisition. New words are given through the students' own choosing, letting the class pick the focus point. To the left is a wonderful tool for the classroom that shows a quick look at prefixes and suffixes students can use to help gain meaning with new vocabulary that may uses these "meaning changers."

The final reading I implemented from this week was Classrooms that work Chapter 6. It reiterated the importance of introducing words with real things. Examples include:

• gymnasium for gym
• equipment for playground toys
• hinge for the door connectors

More classroom strategies to implement vocabulary include:

• taking a virtual field trip and studying words we may not know
• rating words on a scale of how difficult they may be a teach accordingly
• allowing students to make their own vocabulary boards and tally words they continually see and choose the "winning word"
• letting students give you IMMEDIATE feedback with new vocabulary
• 5 fingers: I get it, 0 fingers: I'm confused

We had a lot to read this week so what I want to know is what stuck out to you guys and why?