Blog 10

As a child, and embarrassingly still today, I struggled with vocabulary.  I was great at memorizing the definitions for words so I was able to ace the test, however, when it came to applying the word in life or telling someone what it meant after the test was over I was totally incapable.  I really think the strategies used in the Robust Vocabulary article could have been extremely effective for me growing up.  I truly believe if my teachers implemented some of the activities that the teacher in the article did I would have grasped the meaning of more words and would be able to use those words today in my speech, writing, etc.  I am very glad that I read this article because it has given me some great ideas to implement into my classroom.  These strategies, I believe, will be very beneficial for my students, in special education, because they are very engaging. 

The first thing I really like about this vocabulary technique is that it allows students to choose the words.  Allowing students to choose the words are getting them interested in the vocabulary, helps teachers identify the levels their students are at, and helps students understand things that they hear more often.  Also the teacher has digression to which words are being used so there is not a problem with students choosing too easy of words.  Another thing about this that I really like were the daily activities that were done with the vocabulary words.  I liked how they played games with the words, wrote sentences as a class, and did a final understanding at the end of the week.  My favorite activity they did was writing sentence as a class.  I liked that they first individually thought of ideas, then worked with a partner, and then as a class.  This allowed for a good sentence that really captured the meaning of the word.  I remember the times I was supposed to write sentences when I was younger, and although my sentences made sense, it was very hard to be able to pick out the meaning of the word.  I also really like the use of a word wall.  This allows students to see the words that they are learning.  The teacher would also keep previous words up until she thought her students fully grasped the definition of that word.  Using the wall and repetition I believe would really ingrain the meaning of the words which allows for the student to use the word in their speech!

I think my main question after reading this article is...

Are there any other strategies people know of that worked for them going through schools?  What kind of techniques did your teachers use to teach you vocabulary?