Tier 1: wide, hall, tired, sadness, friendship, kitchen, curtains, outside, nightmare, familiar, respect, candlelight, odd, soldier, listen, forget, brave, breeze, stars
Tier 2: beside, clasped, surge, bond, elderly, suddenly, prepared, replied, finally, rocking chair, curled, dozed, sudden, sweep, sheer, slammed, tensed, recurring, weep, accented, explanation, custom, gleamed, gaze, steadily, harshly, directing, realized, certain, condescending, dangerous, swift, officer, staggered, spattered, glanced, extinguished, wound, gradually, ancient, speckled
Tier 3: staccato, casket, typhus, Nazi, mantel, psalm, Jerusalem, Israel
The most important words for my students to learn would be the Tier 2 words because they’re words that are used frequently in the book to describe things or actions, they are used a lot in books, and they’re used in the classroom as well. Not only are they good for understanding what’s going on in Number the Stars, there are also a lot of descriptive words in the Tier 2 selection that would be helpful for writing exercises for the rest of the unit as well as the school year.
The chapter I pulled words from was Chapter 10, so the students will begin their lesson by doing a read aloud of the chapter, and then we’ll read it again and pull out words that people want to learn more about (even if they might know the definition, they might want to learn the root or the history of the word). Then, we will take a look at our KWL chart that we’ve been developing throughout reading the book and see if we can add anything to it. Maybe this particular chapter got students thinking about new questions they have about the Holocaust or maybe the chapter helped them learn something new they want to share with the rest of the class. For each chapter the students read, I will do a different vocabulary activity with them. For this chapter, I decided to have each student pick a vocabulary word from the Tier 2 selection and do a Word Investigation of it. In the Investigation, students must include:
· The word and its definition,
· the root word,
· the suffix,
· the morphemic analysis,
· the word history,
· related words,
· and figurative use.
Students could use a dictionary and thesaurus, and online resources to investigate their words. When everyone finishes their Word Investigations, I will have the students use their word in a sentence as their post-assessment while I hang up their investigations around the room. After they are finished, they will turn in their sentences and they will have time to explore the room to find the definitions to the rest of the vocabulary words. They will remain up for the rest of the unit. After that unit they will be kept in an easily accessible place so students can reference the words for the remainder of the year.
I thought this chapter from Tompkins was really useful for help with planning lessons to develop vocabulary. Not only did it give you examples, but it broke down different types of lessons you should do with your students, the students that generally need the most vocabulary help, and how socioeconomic status is a factor that affects vocabulary development. It makes me want to start a Word Wizard club when I get my own classroom. Also, I love that at the beginning of each chapter, Tompkins includes an example of an exceptional teacher to give the reader an idea of what it means to teach effectively. I felt like I learned a lot from reading this chapter and I know I will definitely be referencing this next year during my student teaching for ideas!
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ReplyDeleteMary’s mini-lesson has many very engaging activities that involve the students to go far and beyond relying on those old dictionary definitions of new vocabulary words. The order in which Mary has the students finding vocabulary words in the book is great. First off, having students read out loud allows students to listen and try and pronounce words they may not understand. Sometimes, if we cannot pronounce certain words, we might not understand what they actually mean. This is why I think a read out loud is a great way to start out the lesson. Do you plan on having the students read out loud as a class and then share? Or do you plan on having students read as an entire class? From personal experience, I know reading out loud with a partner was always more comfortable for me than reading out loud in front of the whole class. I was a very shy student and sometimes had trouble with reading, so that may be why I preferred it ☺ On the other hand, I think whole class read out loud is a great idea, because everyone can bond as a classroom community and share ideas with each and every person.
ReplyDeleteThe activities following the read out loud are very educational and in-depth to and for students. Students are able to use a KWL chart, which helps students write down the goals of what they want to learn from the newly appointed vocabulary words. Not only are students going to find out the definition, but also they are going to explore some other attributes associated with the words. Students have a variety of sources they can use when trying to figure out what they want to include in their Word Investigations, which is very important. I think this lesson covers many concepts related to the vocabulary words, and students will be able to remember the words from all of the research they will conduct. This is an awesome lesson plan and I might steal it from you in the future Mary, you might want to copyright it… (haha)
After reading the Winter’s article, I think an awesome activity to include in this lesson would be morpheme triangles. Students break apart a word and study the different parts separately. For example, the word “gradually” located on Tier Two, would involve students breaking up the word into grad-ual-ly. The morpheme break down of the word would be placed in the center of the triangle. The students could come up with other possible words for the first part of the word, which is “grad”. Other words could include: graduate, graduation, gradual, and grade. Students would then create the morpheme triangle and include different things they want to search for on the corners on the triangle. At one corner is the root word and other words with that root word, another corner is what the next part of the word used in other words (which is –ual), and the last corner is where the –ly root would be located. They would conduct the same activity as they did for –grad. This allows students to explore all possible meanings and definitions of the word. This also allows for great discussion amongst teacher and students!
I agree with you Mary, the Word Wizard club would be awesome. Getting students motivated and interested in the content is always a challenge, but by making it fun and accessible her students are learning more than if she had just made them do some workbook exercises. I really found the quote from the student interesting:
ReplyDelete"I love being a Word Wizard. I learned lots of new words and that makes me smart. I have a favorite word that is hypothesis. Did you know that I am always looking for more new words to learn? My Tio Mario gave me a dictionary because I wanted it real bad. I like looking for wards in the dictionary and I like words with lots of syllables the best. I want to be in the club next year in 6th grade." (Tompkins, 221)
His excitement has led him to be more self-motivated to learn more about vocabulary. For native speakers, they often get vocabulary from just their everyday lives, or from books they are reading. But for ELL students, since their reading level in English might be lower than their actual grade, they are not getting all the exposure to vocabulary that they need. So making this club for learners to extend their vocabulary is really beneficial. As Tompkins talked about vocabulary "make more capable readers and they know more strategies for figuring out meanings of unfamiliar words" (227)
The homophone Posters (233) is something similar to what my TE 494 (TESOL placement) teacher does. She does a daily vocabulary word and part of the task aside from writing its part of speech, the definition, and a sample sentence, is drawing a picture of the word. This makes the kids really think about what the word means and what is would visually look like.
Your mini lesson would most definitely provide students the opportunity to learn new vocabulary in a meaningful way. I like that you explained it that even if they know the word and its “definition, they might want to learn the root or the history of the word.” I think that could be a great extension for students. I also think it is really cool that they get to explore each other’s work. It goes beyond the students just sitting with an open dictionary and writing the definition of each word. Your students are also allowed to use online resources which opens a whole world of more learning opportunities. Put “elderly” into google and yes you can get a link do dictionary.com, but you also can do a picture search, a video search, and get visual definition of the word. That is a really cool idea.