Vocabulary, Word!

Vocabulary- the knowledge of words and their meanings.

Types of Vocabulary
receptive
productive

I am looking at this, trying to figure out what stands out to be about vocabulary and its use in the classroom. Make no mistake, I know that  a strong vocabulary is VERY important for a child to be successful. After all it affects the child's ability to not only read but to comprehend what he or she is able to read. Students who come in with a smaller range of vocabulary are often a lot further behind in the learning process than the students who come in with a rich vocabulary. That explained, I think what mainly stands out to me in this chapter is receptive words. Most of the words that I know are receptive words. There was not a distinct time when someone sat down and said, "Makita, the word facetious means to be sarcastic in a joking manner". I just picked it up somewhere along the way.

Something else that stands out to me is how students learn vocabulary words. The way that I was taught vocabulary was to memorize them, write a sentence with them and then take a test on them. Every week we had a new list. Did I actually learn these? Some, not all. The older I got the less I learned. I would just memorize them for the test and then as soon as the test was turn in I would dump them from my mind, forgetting that I ever had them in the first place. I like the fact that we wrote sentences using the words, though I distinctly remember hating doing it when I was younger. It gave me the opportunity to tie them into real life,giving me more cause to remember them. Are there better ways of learning vocabulary for older students? Ways that students actually learn them rather than memorize them?

Chapter 5 prezi

http://prezi.com/n37h5awuxakd/questions-to-my-questionschapter-5/

Chapter 7: Getting It Down review.... the low down on taking notes

It took me by surprise that there was actually that much variety in note taking. When I first heard what the chapter was about I pictured the few types of note taking that I had encountered. I pictured guided notes, notes that my teacher had already drafted that we had to copy, and just simply attempting to write everything the teacher said. That was it... three different note taking strategies, only one that I ever found even remotely successful. I attempted to do the "write down what is important" thing but I always had a really hard time with it. My way of thinking was that if the teacher was saying it, it must be important. So I would end up with a giant jumble of notes that were unorganized and hard to understand out of class. With that thought in mind I was happy to read that the author believed professors should organize their lectures in a way that made note taking more organized. It reminded me of a teacher I had during one of my previous years at USM. I would take the notes in the order she told them but later I would find that the notes skipped around a lot more than I had realized in class. This also led me to the conclusion that I was not able to pay attention to what I was hearing while writing the notes down. I thought I was paying attention but in the end I was paying more attention to the notes than the content. Then of course I read that taking good notes trains the student to not only pay attention but also what they are paying attention to. I knew before this chapter that I was a poor note taker, I just didn't know how poor. The fact that I made it all the way to my senior year of college without these skills both amazes and saddens me. I have to ask myself, was I taught to do this and simply did not catch on to it? If that is the case, how will I be certain my students catch on to it? I am going to hope that I was not taught it because in some ways that doesn't shake my belief in education as much as the other option does.

Chapter 6: Picture This!

My Prezi :)

Response to text talk

The first thing that stood out to me is the fact that instead of actually building on to the text, pictures can sometimes take away from it. I always assumed that the pictures would reinforce the story, but according to Beck and McKeown they actually draw the students attention away from the text. This causes students to rely on the pictures for the plot and the students miss a lot of crutial plot information. It was interesting that one of the ways they chose to fix this problem was to show the pictures after reading the book to the students. I have always heard that it is a good idea to show the pictures before reading it to the students as a way of prereading and introducing the main points. So which is the best strategy? Likewise, Beck and McKeown describe background knowledge as something else that gets in the way of students comprehension of the main points of a story. I have always thought the more background knowledge a student has the richer the reading experience would be for them. I feel as though this article contridicts several concepts I have been taught in the education program. Can both ideas be right? I see the truth in both cases but who is right here?

Response: Writing to Learn

My first thought: What does it mean to write to learn? You always hear about reading to learn, but when do you ever really hear about writing to learn? It is a fascinatingly untouched topic. Anyway, as I continued reading through the article I came across different strategies the authors listed. The first ones it discussed were things like structured note taking and learning logs. May I just take a moment to say, "BORING!" I hated doing lessons like that when I was in elementary school. It did not make me want to participate or learn, it made me want to go to sleep. So I am not a huge fan of these. That being said, I know that these can be helpful tools in the college classroom and so I believe the students should know how to do them so they could use them if it ever struck their fancy. The next few strategies listed? A blast! I loved loved loved the biopoem, word maps and ABC list. These are interactive, fun things that I enjoyed doing in elementary and still enjoy doing today. I think it is important to teach students how to write effectively; but I also think in order to teach the students anything it has to be interesting to them. I do not want to show my students how to write, I want to motivate my students to want to write. If I stick to learning logs and structured notes, it will be much harder for my students to find enjoyment in the process. However, if I mix things up a bit and throw in biopoems along with other creative ways of taking notes and remembering information about the lesson I believe they will get more out of the lesson because they are more likely to stay interested while doing it. These days it is hard to keep a grasp on motivational and interactive lessons. It is hard for teachers to be creative when they have so many rules and tests and other outside forces tying their hands. It is so important to find ways to keep the creative learning alive and I believe many of the strategies Knipper and Duggan listed are excellent ways to do it! I think I would just leave the structured notes and learning logs as optional ways to write down information.

Questions for thought:
- Does considering learning logs and structured notes and the sort boring mean I will be a less effective teacher than those who love them?

- What are some other strategies I could use instead of structured notes that would have the same effect and level of learning but be more engaging?

Response: Making a Case and Place for Effective Content Area Literacy Instruction

This article was interesting to me for multiple reasons. I have always been fond of narrative reading and never took to expository reading except for magazine articles I found of interest. While reading this article, I began to wonder if this was simply because I had not been taught how to read and comprehend it when I was younger. According to Barbara Moss, this lack of interest truly does stem from my content area reading instruction from elementary school. Not only that but also the lack of comprehension I have when reading expository text. I feel as though this should definitely be addressed in elementary school so that in the future, students will not have the same issues with informational and expository texts as I do. Honestly, I was particularly surprised by the statement in that article that said elementary students actually choose to read informational text almost half of the time. I do not remember ever choosing to read informational text as a child. I only read it when it was assigned and on occasion I did not even read it then.  My questions are this: Could teaching students how to read expository text really make them not only comprehend that type of text better but also make them a better learner in general? Also, is it possible that by teaching students how to read expository text, teachers can make it more interesting to students? 

I also liked that Moss wrote about the importance of technology in literacy education. Over the past few years, browsing the internet has become a daily ritual for most people. Elementary students are no exception to this statement. The internet can be used to teach or practice important literacy concepts such as reading or writing and this includes expository text.

Something else that interested me was the fact that Moss said the comprehension of expository texts was exceptionally low in schools with large amounts of students from low income families. I was one of those student's and so I can attest to the fact that we may have a few more struggles with certain areas of education. One of those reasons is simply because a lot of these students do not have the at home help that other students might have.