This week we have been reading about expanding children’s vocabulary. In Tompkins’ book we read about the 3 tiers of words. I had never known these existed but now they make total sense. The first tier are basic words that children who are native English speakers do not really need to be taught. The second tier is the academic tiers and are taught to students because they are used in writing more than speaking like in tier 1. Tier 3 are more abstract words called specialized words that are only taught if there is a theme that goes along with it. Tier 2 words seem most important to focus on in my lesson because those words are the core of the lesson and you need to know and understand those words before you can understand tier 3 words. Tier 1 words should already be known or the students can learn them while we are orally saying them.
I am reading the book “Bud, Not Buddy”. I would focus on the first two chapters for words to focus on. I have seen my teacher do this before. I would read the first two chapters and then have the students go back and pick out words they do not know about. Words in this first two chapters are important words for the children to understand as they read the rest of the book (from what I have noticed reading through the book myself). The words the children pick out will most likely be Tier 2 and Tier 3 words. I will make a word wall of these words and go through the words of Tier 2 and explain them. Then I will see if the students can explain Tier 3 words based on what they know from Tier 2 words. If they cannot figure them out I will let them use books (social studies books in particular and dictionaries) to figure out the words and rephrase them. After I let them find definitions, we will come up with a class definition for all the tier 3 words on the word wall.
I could see this turning into a social studies lesson because I see my students picking out words like “depression” from the book. I would make note of that so that I could build off of that in my social studies lesson so they get a better understanding of what these words mean and where this book falls in American History. I will also let the student ask questions about the book. I foresee my students ask about why Bud lives at school and now is going to live with a new family and not his own. This will introduce the word orphan to the children, since Bud’s mother died and Bud’s dad was never in the picture (up until the end). For a mixture of tier 1 and 2 I see my students asking what grown folks are. They will know what grown ups are, so they know the word grown but folks would be a tier 2 or 3 word for them. They do not necessarily need to use the word folks in writing but it is not really a specialized word either. I can see children asking what a lavatory is and I would consider that to be a tier 3 word, since we do not really use that word anymore.
Overall, this would be a difficult lesson to teach but helpful. Difficult because I do not know which words children will ask about and what words they will not ask about. It will be helpful because a lot of the words in these first two chapters are used throughout the book. For the next day, I will have a vocabulary sheet for the students that will have our definitions for the words we talked about and leave a blank spot for the students to write new words they do not know and need to look up.
I think you had some good ideas about using vocabulary from your book club book to teach students some new words. I like that you are using the beginning of the book to make a word wall so that confusion about words can be cleared up right away before students get too far into reading. I also like that you are having students pick the words that they do not understand, so it is a student-generated activity. I think there could also be some changes made to the lesson to allow it to be more meaningful to the students. I think that instead of having students look up the definitions and then coming up with a class definition, they could look up definitions and then make their own definition of the word After writing their own definitions, they can draw a picture describing it and list other similar words. You could also have them include the sentence this word was found in to give them practice identifying sentences in a text and recording specific examples. I think that your lesson is a great way to introduce students to looking up words and understanding how to make meanings from the dictionary, but then students could work on more of these on their own. If they are responsible for making some of their own definitions they could be more likely to remember them and the vocabulary could be more meaningful. I think the ideas in your lesson allow students to be in control of the vocabulary and they learn strategies for exploring new words. I agree that your lesson could be challenging to teach but would be very worthwhile because it could allow students to understand the book better while improving their vocabulary.
ReplyDeleteI read the article Interactive Frames for Vocabulary Growth and word Consciousness. Morpheme Triangles is a new thing to me and it makes me think a lot about how I used to learn English. In my opinion, I think this morpheme triangle strategy will be very hard to apply on ESL students, or maybe some native speakers. I think, in order to expand vocabularies with this strategy, students need to have some previous knowledge of morphemes, prefix, suffix and etc. Students also need to have a certain amount of vocabulary foundation to use this strategy to expand their vocabulary. I agree with the author that this is a great strategy that prompts students’ inquiry and exploration, and it is very individualized. Each student can have their own morpheme triangles to explore and expand their vocabulary in their own style. It is also an open-ended question way of teaching because when asking students to come up with words of the same prefix and suffix, there is no correct answer, as long as the morphemes are the same, the students’ exploration is on the right track. However, there is a misconception that sometimes the combination of the same letters could be a morpheme with a certain meaning, in this case it could be a prefix or a suffix, but sometimes the same combination of those letters is just a simple combination in a word, it doesn’t mean anything and it is not a prefix nor a suffix. If students just categorize words by selecting the same combinations of letters, but not by morphemes, it could confuse the students. I really like the layout and the structure of the morpheme triangle because it is very simple and visual friendly. It gives student a clear instruction of what they should do and it also provide students a clear visualized word map for students to be able to easily analyze and compare the words that they have just expanded. I really like that the article has mentioned that discussion is very necessary after doing this task. It not only can gather more information from each of the students to help each other to expand and learn more words, but also can give the teacher an opportunity to correct common mistakes and misconceptions.
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