WEEK 7 REFLECTION-- ALLEN Chapters 1-3
AFTER Reading chapter 1-3 of Allen's Words, Words, Words, reflect on what is being conveyed regarding vocabulary instruction, reading and learning. What did you learn? How has reading these chapters impacted your thinking on vocabulary?
posted by Susan A. Garr at 4:52 PM
7 Comments:
This is really a great read on teaching vocabulary. Her philosophy seems to be based on getting the students participating in creating language and using it in their own ways, “They used and played with the language we created together—not the language assigned.”(p.3) Her thoughts about creating “a language rich environment”, I find very appealing and challenging for my own classroom. The idea that words can be understood at different levels never really occurred to me, but makes a great deal of sense. The need for students to recognize and understand words in their multiple contexts can be difficult for a ELL student, but fundamental. I agree with Allen in that when students connect words to their own lives understanding and retention has an opportunity to be enhanced.
In general I think Allen has presented a number of well-planned visual and verbal organizers that can be used to increase and improve meaningful language acquisition. I personally plan to scan several of her organizers and make them available to other teachers in a effort to get actual input on their use in the classroom.
I really like everyones comments and after reading these chapters I think we all have a new way of looking at vocabulary. I think one point we need to take into consideration is that it is not so much teaching specfic vocabulary, but also giving the students strategies to discover and comprehend vocabulary on their own.
Also I see a tremendous need to get kids involved with books, which appears to be lost in recent generations. This can be seen in present students use of limited vocabulary, poor speech and writing skills.
VOCABULARY IN CONTEXT
In "Words, Words, Words," Janet Allen is a strong proponent for teaching vocabulary in context and getting rid of the old drill method of learning vocabulary. As she cites in Chapter 1, "For most students, finding definitions and writing those words in sentences have had little apparent impact on their word knowledge and language use” (2). At the same time, “vocabulary knowledge is related to and affects comprehension” (5). In other words, we need to teach vocabulary, but not in the old ways.
Allen provides many different strategies for teaching vocabulary in Chapter 3. These strategies can be used for all kinds of vocabulary including specialized vocabulary for science, math, and social studies. While reading the chapter, I was concerned about the amount of time it would take to teach vocabulary in this way, but she allayed my concerns by explaining the different levels of words. Her strategies should be used on words that are critical to understanding a concept.
I am in two methods courses right now, and the one point that keeps getting hammered into me is teaching in context from teaching vocabulary in a concept-context, to teaching reading and writing in thematic units. The other thing that strikes me is how little this type of teaching is being practiced in the schools that I have observed in. If teaching contextually in thematic units is a more effective method, why aren’t more teachers using it? I realize that teaching in thematic units requires more prep time, but over the years you would build up quite a library of information to pull from and update/edit.
Another question I have regarding these strategies is their efficacy for upper grades (11-12), particularly advanced or honors students. I would guess that they need less direct instruction on vocabulary strategies, but these strategies could be used when necessary.
Words, Words, Words, Building a vocabulary is an important step in a solid education. Words,Words, words, does go along way in showcasing many different reading strategies, that emphasize the importance of such a vocabulary. While I like some of the strategies, and would probably use them in a classroom setting, I would have to agree with the arguement of chapter 2. "A strong reading program" is and has been the best way to improve a students word usage. But another way that is often overlooked at least in American Schools is a second language. English has thousands of words with roots, and prefix in latin and greek orgin. If one studied these classical languages their vocab, would have a tremendous amount of built in knowledge. While second languages are common throughout Schools, they are usually taught much to late. It has long been known that young children pick up second languages, with an ease, that older students could only dream of. So the question should be why are not second languages taught at an earlier, grade. Overall Words, Words, Words, is a decent guideline in improving students vocab, but i will have to agree reading is the best way to improve any ones vocab. While this has nothing or next to nothing to do with the class, I sometimes ponder, if to much of a vocab, is well just to much. What i mean is if i knew the meaning of everyword in the Dictionary what advantage would it be? I know what the word tocsin means, but big deal. One should never forget language is for communication, sometimes it should be done with simple direct language, other time for sheer eloquence. Never should it be done for confusion. by noah Clarke.
REFLECTION- ALLEN CHAPTERS 1-3
I think most of us would agree that the first two chapters are very introductory. I cannot even recall much except that Allen presented her overall theory on vocabulary—we need to use different ways to teach it beyond isolated instruction/rote memorization.
This book is excellent so far for providing practical applications with which her theory can be applied. Although it oftentimes seems redundant, I like the way she provides the graphic organizers in the back and then shows them filled out as well. As a future English teacher, this is readily usable for when I am in a classroom. I am fearing, however, that this is much harder to apply for math teachers. I do see a bridge for social studies and sciences, as vocabulary is integral to these content areas as well.
The frontloading techniques on pages 46-48 caught my attention the most. I think that this gives the educator an assessment of what context information needs to be filled in for the students to learn the words and text most effectively.
A lot of what I read in these chapters reinforced what I already “had a hunch of”… that vocabulary taught generically and isolated is ineffective. Allen tended to give me the hard data or references I needed to back up what I have observed and felt.
I always knew that vocabulary was necessary to fully understand a topic but that was re-affirmed from the Allen text..."vocabulary knowledge is related to and affects comprehension. The relationship between word knowledge and comprehension is unequivocal."I plan on using vocabulary in my content area, history, and I feel re-assured that it would not be a waste of time.
Most kids feel that vocabulary is a waste of time and that it is busy work. When I was in high school history, no one liked doing vocabulary. Half the time we already knew what the word meant. BUT, we did not always know how to relate the meaning of the word to what we were studing. As a teacher, it will be important for me to relavance of the terms to the history, why they are related and why they are important. I also would want to clear up any ambiguous meanings of words. Oftentimes, we learn only one meaning of a word, when there are many. Allen says "Word knowledge is not an all or nothing propostition. Words may be known at different levels"
Also, I really liked that the book gave alternate strategies to point blank rote memorazation. I know that I will need more than one of these strategies in order to reach all of my students. My favorite of the strategies were:"how well do I know these words" worksheet, as well as the making connections worksheet, that way the student can not only monitor their own progress through the semester, but they can also see the relation of terms to topics and connect them throughout the course and history.
Jacqueline Aessa
Title: Teaching Vocabulary
I definitely agree with Allen on the importance of having a good vocabulary (page 9) From personal experience when every I knew the vocabulary of a text that I was reading, I became more interested to continue reading. This is because I was having less hindrance stopping me from reading and making understanding easier.
This is why I am thinking that may be once a week I will give students a work and they will need to come with a proper sentence or even better a paragraph that uses that word. It does not necessarily have to be a math work, but it will be some thing close
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