Learning Blog 5

Chapter 7, on vocabulary, started with a statement that I found very interesting on page 169: “A strong vocabulary equips students to actively participate in society as educated citizens and informed consumers.” The chapter made me realize the importance of students remembering and retaining vocabulary words instead of just decoding the word and having an understanding that does not carry with them. The chapter mentioned the decline in vocabulary scores with new college enrollees. I’ve found this to be true in my personal experience. I feel like I haven’t really been taught ways to remember vocabulary or even been taught the importance of vocabulary. I’ve always assumed that this was due to the “technology age” that our generation lives in. The chapter reinforces this idea and suggests that there needs to be a way to incorporate technology into learning vocabulary (the vocabulary podcasts is a great connection with this, found on page 190).

Another point I found interesting in the chapter was when the authors were discussing the importance of beginning vocabulary instruction in the lower elementary grades. Page 175 describes findings of 2 researches and says, “Biemiller and Boote provided evidence that limited oral vocabularies among children in early grades predict limited reading comprehension later in their schooling experiences.” Like I’ve said before in previous blog posts, I’ve found myself concentrating on my first graders decoding and reading fluently that I haven’t concentrated a lot on vocabulary. When it comes to other subjects such as science, social studies, and math, I do address the vocabulary but I do not spend as much time on it as I should.

Some of the activities that I liked in each phase of PAR are:

In the P phase, I like the word inventories probably because I really liked the precheck learning concept in chapter 3! I feel like this is a great self-inventory tool and will enable the students to be aware of their prior knowledge.

In the A phase, I was intrigued when reading about the podcast. I think that this is a great way to get the students involved in using technology but using it to increase and challenge their vocabulary instead of decreasing it and simplifying it.

In the R phase, I really liked the vocabulary illustrations! I feel like this is something that I could use in my classroom frequently. I really liked this strategy because it allows the students to reflect on what they’ve read and create their own meaning for vocabulary words. Another reason I like it, is because the students will be creating a visual representation of what the vocabulary word(s) represent to them and this will aid in helping them to remember its meaning.

I found the strategies in this chapter to be geared more towards upper grades; however, there were some strategies (as mentioned above) that I can implement in my first grade classroom. The examples/diagrams were extremely helpful in aiding me to understand the strategies being discussed. When I was confused about something, the diagram really helped me to visual it!