Teaching Vocabulary

Chapter 7

As much as I think reading is extremely important, you can’t read without knowing words, right?  The problem is vocabulary is hard to learn.  I know I struggled when I was a young reader with vocabulary and everybody said to me, the more you read the better your vocabulary will get.  Well, who wants to read if you don’t know what you are reading.  This truly is what has always set me off of reading.  Now I know vocabulary quite well but I still don’t enjoy reading too much because of the past.  I had one teacher that worked with me and did some of these exercises mentioned in this chapter to build my vocab up.  As a future teacher, I can see myself working with vocab a little bit more than other teachers because I know how I felt as a student.  By the way I don’t mean writing down the vocab list and writing definitions, that to me doesn’t teach anything, just busy work.  The very first strategy I think is great.  Before even getting into the reading, having students put how much they know these new words so as a teacher you know what to work on.  It also lets them see what they will be encountering that could be challenging.  Synonyms are a simple tool to teach more complex words.  I personally still do this myself, using simpler words to help define a word I have trouble with.  I also really liked the categorization activity.  It can be used as a good visual after words to help see associations of the words.  Under the study system, I wish somebody had taught me TOAST.  These seems like a great study tool that would really help to learn and understand the vocab words.  Imaging is a great tool, this helps to actually see the word in your head.  Lastly, I love the ideas of the different games with vocab, trying to make learning them fun and not seem such a task. 

Learning through Reflection

Chapter 5

We have finally gotten to the chapter that I have been quite interested in reading.  Reflection is something I think is extremely important in learning and often forgotten about, at least in my past experiences.  A quote from the book I really like was, “Reflective thinking to be careful thought persisting toward an objective of coming closer to the truth.” P.109.  Reflection is a moment that helps everything come together and stick in your memory.  The book brings up a few skills that should be used in this stage.  First is communication, this is essential to talk things out.  A lot of problem solving can be done by just stating thoughts and opinion and reflecting and communication is needed.  Next, and most important is critical thinking.  This skill is needed in life and I feel that many people don’t develop the critical thinking skills they need.  Teachers need to remember that this is not just for math but to further the learning process.  The book showed some great examples for this and some good information, p.112.  Lastly, is critical literacy.  This is simply, or not so simply, reading between the lines.  This can be very hard for some students to learn and understand but a great way to help reflect.  A great way to reflect is through cooperative learning, if done right, because it is not just group work.  Teachers need to take the time to help students know what to do.  Lastly, I’m going to list and briefly state different strategies and activities for reflection.

1.       Brainstorming- This isn’t like normal brainstorming but more of jotting important topics from the reading as you go.  It can also be a group thing that students think of solutions for something in the text, and as a class all pick the best one and explain why.

2.       Post-Graphic Organizers- One of my favorites, this is a way to jot down, in a visually appealing way, important facts and organizing them.  This helps to trigger the memory of the story.

3.       Making Connections- Making a connection makes the text relatable and easier to remember and understand.

4.       Double-Entry Journals- Students can use these to reflect and think about the story.  What they liked, their favorite part, a quote they liked.  It helps them think about the story more.

5.       Rallytable- Providing an open-ended question and allowing the students, in pairs, think of as many solutions as possible, discussing these afterwards.

6.       Numbered Heads Together- A game, coming up with solutions to open-ended questions.

7.       Paired Reading- Having students pair up, one tells the story from their memory and another listens.  They alternate, can use drawings and such to help retell the story.

8.       Three-Step Interview- Interviewing each other.

9.       Repeated Readings and Text Lookbacks- Rereading the text, I know as a student I did not enjoy this at all.

10.   Group Summarizations- Working together to summarize reading.

11.   Reflection Guides- A guide to help them start a discussion about the reading.

12.   Think-Pair-Share- Have students answer a thought provoking question, pair up to discuss it, come together as a group to discuss.  They can then read to see if the reading answers their questions more.

13.   Extended Anticipation Guide- exactly what it says but after reading.

14.   About/Point- What the story is about and what are the main points.

15.   Self-Generated Questions- making own questions about reading.

16.   Think-Alouds- This can happen anytime through the reading process, during and after.  Students can write down what they are thinking as they read to help develop the understanding of the text.

Assistance in Learning

Chapter 4

A quote that I liked from the book that starts the chapter is, "An important step in the PAR Lesson Framework is the Assistance Phase in which students develop and deepen their understanding of any learning activity." p.81  I felt like this quote just summarized the whole chapter and why we are reading it.  The first important tool brought up that I personally really like is mapping.  These can be very effective and even be used as a study tool because it maps out all the important information.  Next is the constructivism theory where students take the information and reshape into something that is relatable or makes sense to them in their world.  Segment of text has two strategies; directed reading-thinking activity and guided reading procedure.  The first one is to help students realize that one segment can help them understand the next one.  The second one, students gather and organize information around the main topic.  Reciprocal teaching is when students and teachers work together to understand the reading.  The book also came up with some great ideas of ways to help students comprehending text.  The activities are mystery clue game, pattern guides, level study guides, organizational charts, and student-generated questions. P.94-100  I really liked the pattern guides.  I think again like mapping these are great to lay out all the ideas and have something to study or look back at later.  I was really interested in the QAR because I have heard of it before but was never really sure what it was.  Even after reading this section I was a little iffy on it but the image on p.102 was a great way to be able to actually see it.  The best part of this book is not only do they give great strategies to use but they give examples so that you can see it and what it would look like.  It is the part that helps me the most. 

PAR Lesson Plan

Topic: Force and Motion
Grade Level: Fourth Grade

SOL's

4.2      The student will investigate and understand characteristics and interactions of moving objects.  Key concepts include
a. motion is described by an object's direction and speed;
b. changes in motion are related to force and mass;
c. friction is a force that opposes motion; and
d. moving objects have kinetic energy.

Objectives
Students will observe and describe the objects and what happens when motion and friction are applied.
The students will be able to explain why it happened and how kinetic energy is used.
 

Written purpose:

Strategies/Activities:

Preparation: Analogies, this would be great to get them to get an abstract concept with something they already know about.  I just need to think of a good one.

Assistance:  DR-TA, I think this would be a great tool because it will assist through getting new information on a topic they might not know much about.  Students can write what they already know about the topic, what they want to know out of it, what they learned from it, and what else they want to know.  This will also help me to see what they got out of the story and what information needs to be cleared or discussed more.
A pattern guide is another tool where the students could possibly match the cause and effect as they go through the different aspects.

Reflection: Group and Label, would help students to recognize the difference between force, motion, friction and kinetic energy.
Also, self generated questions.  This will help answer those questions that are still lingering about an abstract concept such as this.

Evaluation:

Ideas: project, experiment, presentation of project or experiment findings/results

How I would use the preparation step

Which strategy would you use to assess students' prior knowledge and why?

One strategy that I would like to use often is analogies.  I find that these can be quite useful and really relate the material to something the students already know about.  It is a very effective tool to assist in learning and reading and get the students engaged in it.  Information found on pages 75 through 77.

Analogies

Chapter 3

Preparing students to read is similar to.....

-learning to swim, bike, etc.

-getting a new pet

-going on vacation

-being on a sports team

Similarities...

Example, getting a new pet. 

You have to look into where the pet likes to live, what they eat, how much exercise they need, what special needs they have.  If you just get a pet without knowing how to take care of it, well, you will probably fail as a pet parent.

This is the same as reading.
        
Students need to be prepared for reading to know what it will be about, how they can relate it to themselves, and what to expect to learn.  If these are not done, students will most likely not get all the information needed out of the text and not completely comprehend the material, failing to accomplish the task.

Preparation

Chapter 3

After reading this chapter it answered a question I had in my mind this whole time.  Why are there charts on the beginning of every chapter.  After reading the chapter and looking back at the charts they are great tools.  They layout the whole chapter and what will be covered.  To build off this, this chapter was about the preparation stage in PAR.  It started out with some interesting information that I felt was very important.  Even the smartest of people have a hard time reading things they are not interested in.  This fact made me feel a lot better.  I know that as a student it wasn’t ever that reading was too hard, I just didn’t find it interesting.  The book then describe how the process of learning is like a basketball game.  This was a great analogy, which is another tool they brought up, that could be used to help students understand the learning process.  After all this the reading began talking about prior knowledge.  We know that people learn better when they can apply it to something they already know, it can just be hard to do this in the classroom.  Teacher’s need to get creative to activate that prior knowledge to reading.  They talked about some examples to use to help active prior knowledge.  The examples they gave were; prelearning concept check, story impressions, K-W-L activity, WIKA, rewriting text, written previews, graphic organizers, anticipation guides, factstorming, prep strategy, and analogies.  I found a lot of these very good ways to help prepare for reading.  I really liked the analogies idea because it is a great way to try and connect the story to what students already know about.  I have to also say, I love how the book has an example of all the different ideas to get a sense of what it could look like.  I was a little confused before on what activities are done in the preparation stage but know I almost feel like an expert on ideas to use.