Notes from the midyear presentation:
What question are you asking?
How can knowledge of students’ word consciousness help teachers push students to expand their vocabulary on their own and not be reliant on their teacher as the only vessel for learning vocabulary?
How can I use students’ own word consciousness to help them build their
vocabulary?
How can I help students to use their word consciousness to build their vocabulary without being reliant on the teacher for a “list” of vocabulary words?
Why does answering this question matter?
This question matters for several reasons. 1. studies show that successful students (college graduates) have large vocabularies that grow throughout their educations; but really grow throughout elementary school;
(from www.balancedreading.com/vocabulary) According to Beck and McKeown (1991), 5 to 6 year olds have a working vocabulary of 2,500 to 5,000 words. Whether a child is near the bottom or the top of that range depends upon their literacy skills coming into the first grade (Graves,1986; White, Graves & Slater, 1990). In other words, by the first grade, the vocabulary of the disadvantaged student is half that of the advantaged student, and over time, that gap widens. The average student learns about 3,000 words per year in the early school years -- that's 8 words per day (Baumann & Kameenui, 1991; Beck & McKeown, 1991; Graves, 1986), but vocabulary growth is considerably worse for disadvantaged students than it is for advantaged students (White, Graves & Slater, 1990)
2. students should be taught to be self-teachers and not rely on their classroom teachers (or parents) to just “pour” information into their minds;
3. word consciousness, the combination of word awareness and vocabulary (meaning) is a tool through which teachers can assist their students in growing vocabulary
How did you choose your focal student(s)?
Surveyed the class. From the 4/5 combo all had an interest in words, and a knowledge of some other language (varying levels), as stated in the survey. all are 5th graders, girls – variety of achievement levels
What have you done to answer this question? What data have you gathered (our hope is that by this time you will have at least three or four pieces of data for each focal student)?
2 videos of lunchtime conversations; word wall;
students’ word journals;
conversations from the word wall (whole class)
“show what you know” worksheet
What is a recent piece of data that you have collected and what does it tell you about student understanding?
word wall conversation =
& show what you know * not sure if students are overestimating their use of the words
What discoveries or realizations have you made along the way about your students’ learning? What have you learned about what they know and/or what you want them to know? (Here you could just focus-in on one particular student -- since time is tight-- and talk specifically about what you have learned about that student).
Outside of the focal students, the interest in words, just based on the word wall, has risen in the class. I see dictionaries out more, a larger variety of students are writing on the word wall, they go up and read what’s written and talk about what’s written on the word wall. today, one student tried counting the “blue words” and said there were over 50 (2/7/12)
How have you changed your teaching based on what you have learned?
I’m not sure anything has changed for me, but we had a walk through a couple of weeks ago where teachers from another school in the district came and visited the classroom and they were very interested by the work and I overheard some conversation between them about how they might consider changing how they have word walls in their classrooms.
I continue to use challenging vocabulary for the students while building in contextual support so they understand the meaning.
What have you noticed about your students’ learning progress around your question?
there seems to be more curiosity about vocabulary, words, their meanings, and their usages. more students write on the word wall and more students ask, “what does that mean”.
What do you want to do next?
have a word wall conversation, but instead of whole class, small groups & then report out – in this way I can seat my focal students together and let them talk and record that
continue using the “show what you know” pages
And, BEFORE THE NEXT MEETING I WANT TO:
Assign my students a choice of activities and levels with which to work with the words on the wall.
"Easy" - 3-5 words
"Medium" - 5-7 words
"Challenge" - 7-10 words
Activity choices:
1. create a crossword puzzle
2. write a story
3. write a poem
4. turn the words into pieces of art that define the word
I'm hoping students will be inspired to start using the words, rather than just finding new ones and putting them on the board! :) Also, I'm hoping to do this activity 2-3 additional times before the end of the year.
