"I bet that made you feel morose," Kevin commented on my Facebook page a few weeks ago when I had made some sort of innocuous Facebook status update. Kevin was from the class of 2007, I think, and he remembered a vocabulary word he learned way back when was a Freshman.
This comment is ringing in my ear now, as I ponder vocabulary instruction in my class. This year, our team decided to teach the 9th graders 4-6 new words a week, all having to do with the literature we were learning. To learn 160-200 new words a year is a pretty amazing feat, I think. To actually teach them and have the students learn them: that's an important facet of English instruction.
However, the directive from the principal was, "Four words a week is not enough". Apparently, when my department head brought it up at the instructional leadership team meeting, several other department heads poo-pooed the idea, saying things like, "_______ Middle School does 10 a week".
However, is "doing" ten words a week what we want? How do we know that "doing" them means they're learning them? With four words a week, we were practicing flashcards and actually learning the words. This wouldn't happen with ten. So what is the goal here? The kids learning the words or the kids doing the words?
It's a strange place to be in, to be directed to do more of something that you just barely felt you were doing well. What's best for the kids? English teachers have writing skills (timed writing and planned writing), grammar, vocabulary, oral expression skills, and reading skills to cover. How is it that we're not doing enough vocabulary when I already felt we were a little too much spread out? It's something we'll deal with all year, and, in the meantime, we will increase the vocabulary and see what happens. But I always believed that teaching wasn't about throwing a bunch of things at the kids and hoping some of it sticks. If I teach something, I want to teach it well. This doesn't feel like it.
Rowdies at Dawn
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6 comments:
As a middle school teacher in the city that used to teach the students 10 words a week, I can tell you the only thing the students learn is how to spell them and use them in one context. We use a program called "word generation" now out of Boston where the students learn 5 words of week but rather than just learn to spell them, they learn the different forms of the words (nouns, verbs, adj.) as well as how they are used in different contexts. It works pretty well. But I agree, 10 words a week, while it may seem like the students are learning them, is really just memorization and useless.
Well, I think the difference is, a middle school teacher in BCPSS gets a 90 minute period every day.
I just front-loaded 20 words for Unit 2. Some of the words most of the students know already, but don't use (non-violent, resource, opposition, etc) and some of the words are new to them. We're doing jigsaw activities with readings that I've bolded the vocab words in, Cloze activities for warm-ups, and we're going to do a jigsaw gallery walk tomorrow. I also incorporate references to affixes often. One class that needed extra help played an affixes dice game sort of like boggle, where they had to make as many words as possible with a prefix dice and a suffix dice. I also love the Magic Square puzzles for vocab, key concepts, review, whatever you want to throw in there! I try to hit vocabulary heavy in at least one way every day. Are the students learning it? I hope eventually it'll sink in. I hit it so heavy because vocabulary is really the gateway to knowledge, and to becoming a lifelong learner.
-- high school social studies teacher
To Steph:
Actually, most middle school teachers (especially those not tested by MSA) only get a 45-60 minute period . . .
Your student remembering "morose" made me think of two my students always loved - "conspicuous" and it's "easy opposite" "inconspicuous"... we did loads of acting words out, drawing, competing to come up with best ways to remember... and I tried to find ways to teach groups of words in relation to each other... synonyms, antonyms, etc... both because it was efficient and worked, and because it supports them in making like connections for testing. Have you checked out vocabahead.com? If you don't have the IT access, you could still do something similar using the strategies I named. I know it's frustrating to have external forces dictate "your" weekly goals, but if that's the way it is, you might as well have some fun!!! Plus, making it fun will get the kids on your side and they can learn LOADS more when they want to, than when they are on auto-pilot. I have lots of ideas and resources for teaching vocab if you are interested. Don't hesitate to reach out. I'm @thenewtag on twitter. Good luck!
A nice article that agrees with your "less is more" philosophy. Maybe it could find its way into your principal's mailbox:
http://www.ldonline.org/article/5759
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