October, 2014 Classroom Tip: Vocabulary Development Commonwealth Learning Online Institute (CLOI) Developed by Jean McCormack Vocabulary Instruction: How? When? Why? Students need to continuously grow their vocabulary. There is a constant debate over the best methods teachers should use. Research supports using a variety of explicit and incremental methods. Learning content area vocabulary is critical to expanding a student’s knowledge base and mastery of new grade level skills. For example, in 4th grade math, the new terms numerator and denominator will be taught explicitly. It’s imperative that students already know and accurately use terms like integer, multiply, divide, quotient, remainder etc. Teachers must be vigilant about teaching multiple meaning words that span content areas. A student who knows all the meanings of a word such as scale will not be surprised to encounter it in different contexts. Click below to see a video demonstrating the technique of concept sorts. youtu.be/d_R5wfmWIlQ When students can think critically about a new term and analyze it as this activity demonstrates, it is much more likely to be embedded into their working vocabulary for speaking and writing. The cubing activity, illustrated in the chart on the CLOI Blog post at commlearnonline/blog/ , (Bean, Readence, & Baldwin, 2008) requires students to examine a concept from different dimensions. Students demonstrate their understanding of a term by describing, comparing, associating, analyzing, applying, and arguing for or against it. As state standards align to the Common Core standards, students will be facing the PARCC or Smarter Balanced test in the near future. The CLOI Building Vocabulary course offers practical methods of teaching vocabulary. Click to see more information on this and other CLOI Courses. commlearnonline/facilitated-online-courses/building-vocabulary/ CLOI courses empower teachers to change classroom practice and maximize student success through their alignment with the Common Core, and use of job-embedded, practical classroom applications.
Posted on: Tue, 07 Oct 2014 19:40:23 +0000
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