"Why don't kids know more words? The obvious answer is that they don't read enough." That was the quote that grabbed my attention when I read this chapter. The second thing that grabbed my attention when I read this chapter is that when a student is handed a copy of Great Expectations in ninth grade they are familiar with fewer than 80% of the words in that book. That is not OK with me.
I like the idea to give the students a bookmark to write down words they are not familiar with. That way when there is a class discussion the students will have something to talk about. I also like the Do/Don't list. It has some good ideas. Such as: Keep lists of new words posted around your classroom for constant reference. Try to use these words as you teach.
I think it is very important for students to keep track of words that they have problems with. If they just skip over those words they will never know them. If they keep track of them and take the time to talk about them and learn the meaning they are more likely to remember it.
One of the things that I agree with is that it is not Ok for students to know fewer than 80% of the words in Great Expectations. One of the things that I found while I was looking up things for my wiki is a youtube video about vocabulary in one scene of the movie Pride and Prejudice. I think that is a good way to help students broaden their vocabulary because it will be fresh in their minds.
ReplyDeleteI still don't feel like that bookmark is enough. By high school age, our learning curve is so slow for language. We've all taken linguistics by now (i think), did you guys talk about language acquisition. I don't know the number off the top of my head, but we know most of our words by a very young age and we stop learning new ones by this age a lot of the time. It's much harder to.
ReplyDeleteI was really disappointed in her suggestions because they were so surface level.