I have noticed in a lot of my observations that students have a lot of trouble with vocabulary. I have also noticed that many teachers use a lot of the same dull and boring techniques to teach vocabulary. "Get a dictionary, define these words, and use them in a sentence." I remember doing this all through out middle and high school. I have required a lot of vocabulary, but I pretty sure the majority of it was not from these practices. I gained all my knowledge from reading. The problem with this is that students can't get this knowledge of vocabulary from reading if they can't understand the words that are there in the first place.
This is where this chapter came in and gave a lot of really great ideas for how to effectively teach students vocabulary. I know that in my field experience my student struggles with vocabulary and I am going to go over these techniques and try to apply them to give him a better way to learn "all those big words."
My experiences with learning vocabulary have been the same as yours. It makes me wonder why teachers don't try harder to make vocabulary fun and useful? For students who don't like words and aren't good at memorizing, vocabulary can be dreadful. I really liked many of the suggestions in Chapter 9 because they approach learning vocabulary from a useful perspective. I think students need to learn words that they will use in a way that is fun and engaging. I think you learn a lot more when you have an opportunity to play with the words as opposed to just memorizing a list of them. I'm also looking forward to trying some of the suggestions with students at my field experience.
ReplyDeleteThe idea of learning more when engaging in an exciting activity makes so much sense. Of course I'm not going to be interested if I'm not doing something interesting. There's so much more involved with planning a lesson or unit plan than just how much work I'll have to do. In fact, when an activity is student-centered they're the ones doing most of the work and also learning the most. There's more at stake when planning an activity than just my own effort. It's the possibility of a student not learning as much as they could have if I'd only put more thought into creating an entertaining lesson plan.
ReplyDeleteI have also noticed that the students have trouble with vocabulary during my observations. It is really frustrating that some of the teachers are ignoring that and just pushing forward through the reading. I also could not agree more when you said, "'Get a dictionary, define these words, and use them in a sentence.' I remember doing this all through out middle and high school. I have required a lot of vocabulary, but I'm pretty sure the majority of it was not from these practices. I gained all my knowledge from reading." I feel like a lot of my high school teachers did this too and now knowing about these strategies, I wish they would have used these instead.
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