I would like to begin by saying that although I already knew the facts about vocabulary increases due to reading, I was happy to see them in this book. I have always been a reader, and I can tell that my vocabulary has increased through the years. This is one of the reasons that reading for pleasure is so important, and I will be sure to tell my future students that. I also really liked how Jago made up the 'My Personal Vocabulary List'. It allows students to be able to pick words that they do not understand and look them up on their own time. It reminds me of what I did while tutoring at Firestone. I told my student to highlight any words that she did know, and we could try to find their meaning based on the context that was surrounding them. I think that by having students choose thier own words, they will learn on their own level. For example, one student might know some of the words that another does not, so it only makes sense to let them learn the words they need. I also like how she uses prefixes and suffixes to teach new words. The fact that they would go over the words and try to figure them out together as a class.
I also liked how Jago included the 'do and don't' list on how to teach vocabulary. I used to always have to just copy the definition of the words to my vocabulary lists from the dictionary when I was in school. I never learned this way. Half of the time the definitions are too wordy and could be so much simpler, especially to a student. I plan on holding on to this textbook for many reasons, but a new reason would be to use the guide she describes for teaching Julius Caesar as well.
I remember having to get out the dictionary and look up the words and copy them into my notes and write a sentence about the word. It was boring and everyone hated it. Though in one of my classes, sometime in middle school we got our vocabulary lists and they had the definition already there. Unless we really need to teach students how to use a dictionary, and we for some reason need to give them vocabulary lists, I think this could be a more effective way of doing so, because we didn't hate it and we sort of competed for who got the best score every week.
ReplyDeleteHaving students compy the same definiton over and over again seems like a terrible idea on paper, I absolutely hated my language arts teachers in middle school for making us do this. But I learned from this, I still remeber msot of the vocabulary worsd I ws taught throguh repetivitve memeorization. The tewacher I am refereing to had us write the definition ten times, and write 10 different sentences using the word, I think unsing the word ten times in ten different sentences helped me too.
ReplyDeleteI liked a lot of Jago' ideas on teaching vocabulary as well. One thing that really helped me when I was in high school was stem vocabulary. Although we had the standard list to memorize for Friday's test, learning the prefixes or suffixes of words and splitting words up allowed me to understand more vocabulary because I was able to have an idea of what the word meant based on certain parts of the word.
ReplyDeleteUGH - I hated copying words from the dictionary! I am glad you are finding her ideas useful!
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