"A list for improving literacy with focus on middle grades." <[email protected]> on Tuesday, January 22, 2008 at 2:51 PM -0500 wrote: >Hi, I have been shadowing your group for awhile and found your >discussions interesting and useful. I am a reading consultant in a >middle school. >We are constantly talking about acquisition of vocabulary. Much of the >conversation revolves around finding words and the assessment. The >process for learning the words is somehow lost. I'd like to interject >that we all don't learn words in the same way. Some students can look a >word up and retain the definition. Some students can learn it from >context. Some students can draw a picture incorporating the meaning of >the word and some students can learn words through mnemonics. Vocabulary >Cartoons by New Monic Books is really fun and gives the students a >creative way to grow their vocabulary. I also have found Words Count by >Scott C. Greenwood and Words, Words, Words by Janet Allen to be great >resources. When the kids find a way to learn the words then the whole >process becomes more engaging and actually fun.
Hi! That's a good point, Susan. That came up, albeit peripherally, in class today when we came up with the idea that the kids might make up their own vocabulary quizzes (out of the list of accepted formats we agreed upon) as a way to study. Sometimes I think I should also come up with a list of possible activities the kids could do to help themselves learn the lists they generate. Your ideas are all great. What other ideas are out there? My kids, by the way,came up with the following ideas for assessments: - traditional "word-definition- sentence" quizzes - crosswords matching definition to word - writing a story incorporating the words - writing antonyms - combining formats We talked a bit about recall vs. recognition, and rejected word searches as being a bit too much "recognition" and not enough "recall." For a day when 60% of them were either out sick or visited the nurse and barely made it through the day, it was a pretty good discussion. Take care, Bill _______________________________________________ The Literacy Workshop ListServ http://www.literacyworkshop.org To unsubscribe or modify your membership please go to http://literacyworkshop.org/mailman/options/lit_literacyworkshop.org. Search the LIT archives at http://snipurl.com/LITArchive
