What does effective vocabulary instruction require and why is vocabulary instruction so important?
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| Words ~ Copy Right KerGL 2013 |
Language is the window to the world, to learn a language you have to know the vocabulary. Most of the time, vocabulary is the reason why a lot of the students (even adult) stop learning a language.
All the articles shared in the expert group have a similar theme, bridge the concept/ words to the students' environment, to make the words relevant and meaningful for them. Before all this can happen in the classroom, we should know our lesson, why are we teaching this, and also know our students in order to help them in their learning.
Learning without clear instruction is like walking in the thick forest without knowing the end point. A little effort to know our students and list down the clear goal before lesson will definitely help teacher in deliver a more effective lesson. I like how Kevin Flanigan and Scott C.Greenwood said in Effective content vocabulary instruction in the middle: Matching Students, purposes, words and strategies :All words are not create equal (P.228) We should not spend equal time in teaching each of the vocabularies on the list. In fact, we should level each words according to their purposes, relation with the lesson and students, then think of the strategies to teach them to students. This is a bit similar to the Understanding by Design framework, know our objectives and work backwards. I really like the idea as it helps both teachers and students focus on tasks.
After sharing in the expert group, I concluded that knowing the students' background (which stage is the student in learning alphabets, Bridge between decoding and reading comprehension), use different strategies to make connection to the concept and real life (Vocabulary Self Collection), provide them with choices and empower them to help themselves (Bumping in to spicy, tasty words that catch your tongue) will contribute to a more effective vocabulary instruction.
All the articles shared in the expert group have a similar theme, bridge the concept/ words to the students' environment, to make the words relevant and meaningful for them. Before all this can happen in the classroom, we should know our lesson, why are we teaching this, and also know our students in order to help them in their learning.
Learning without clear instruction is like walking in the thick forest without knowing the end point. A little effort to know our students and list down the clear goal before lesson will definitely help teacher in deliver a more effective lesson. I like how Kevin Flanigan and Scott C.Greenwood said in Effective content vocabulary instruction in the middle: Matching Students, purposes, words and strategies :All words are not create equal (P.228) We should not spend equal time in teaching each of the vocabularies on the list. In fact, we should level each words according to their purposes, relation with the lesson and students, then think of the strategies to teach them to students. This is a bit similar to the Understanding by Design framework, know our objectives and work backwards. I really like the idea as it helps both teachers and students focus on tasks.
After sharing in the expert group, I concluded that knowing the students' background (which stage is the student in learning alphabets, Bridge between decoding and reading comprehension), use different strategies to make connection to the concept and real life (Vocabulary Self Collection), provide them with choices and empower them to help themselves (Bumping in to spicy, tasty words that catch your tongue) will contribute to a more effective vocabulary instruction.
The vocabulary instruction will help bridge the students background knowledge to the content/ concept that we want them to learn. It will help us to access to the students' prior knowledge in a systematic way. Not only the teachers have a sense of control over the students learning by providing clear instruction that align with the goals of the lesson, the students too will have a sense of responsible to their own learning. We don't want to be like the jungle guide, Bill in one of the article, wondering around the thick forest without considering the people following behind him. Teaching for me is like getting the students from point A to point B, there are various route to get to point B with different kind of transportation depends on the students' interest, ability, choices and etc. A clear and well planned vocabulary instructions will help different students get to point B in different ways.
Effective means the students learn the words, use the words, and remember the words. (When Kids can't read, P.178) If a school do have a planned vertical curriculum on vocabulary instruction, it will definitely help the students in learning vocabulary in a more effective way.
Effective means the students learn the words, use the words, and remember the words. (When Kids can't read, P.178) If a school do have a planned vertical curriculum on vocabulary instruction, it will definitely help the students in learning vocabulary in a more effective way.
Ker, thank you for you post! I had just written this enthusiastic response to your blog and it got deleted! I will try my best to convey the same sentiments in this second attempt to post a comment!
ReplyDeleteI really wanted to thank you for summarizing the various vocabulary techniques that we can use concurrently to provide effective vocabulary instruction. Sometimes I feel as though teaching itself is also a trek through the jungle but with this class, I'm finding the necessary tools to reach the end. In line with that analogy, I love that you mention differentiation and how it is like making multiple paths to the end for our students. Students don't have to follow one path that we designate. Rather we can enlist their help to create multiple paths toward the end. We do so by giving the content to learn back into the hands of our students through strategies such as VSS. Allowing our students to pave their own way of learning fosters deeper understanding of words they are studying. On top of that, drawing on prior knowledge helps solidify the understanding of new meanings in new words. Thank you for that wonderful analogy. It helps to visualize teachers and students as explorers working together to overcome obstacles and reach the end together. Thank you! Sally
Ker, Thank you for the post. I, too, appreciated the analogy your created. I am curious about what you said about a vertical curriculum in regards to vocabulary. Could you elaborate on this? Is this something this something like predetermined vocabulary listed developed for each content area? While I see a need for some sort of standardization, if this the case it might turn into vocabulary lists without purpose. As I write this ,I think I am misunderstanding the term vertical instruction in this context.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I like that you emphasized that words are not created equal and then connected it to UBD. You're right, when looking at a selected text you are working backwards in that you are looking for domain specific words to ensure that your student are going to be able to understand the content, rather than having your students read from a selection, then clarify, then assess. Thanks for the post! Jim
I'm just thinking from learning Chinese as a foreign language point of view. The nature of the Chinese language is sooooo different from English or other phonetic languages, I always have difficult time when teaching intermediate students (who learnt Chinese for 3 or 4 years). As their baseline is different, and it almost like going back to beginner stage for them if I was to just to take everyone's differences into account and modified my content area. You are right that it's something like predetermined vocabularies, and we try to take relevance, culture, environment and purposes into consideration when planning lessons. What our school currently doing is design the curriculum (vertical and horizontal) base on concept, and hopefully this will students to have better understanding of concept and content.
DeleteI hope it's not too confusing for you. I would love to explain into more details if you have any questions. Thank you for your comments. =)