Word work is something they learn in primary grades… but is it?
Word work is something that continues throughout life whenever a reader reads an unknown word.
To support students who did not master “breaking the code” it is important to consider the text from that student’s point of view. As Beers discussed in chapter 10, we need to reread the text carefully to look at inferences our readers will need to make and what words students should know to understand the central idea and are not defined in the text. We have to teach kids to think through text and not provide answers for them. We have to teach students through modeling our thinking during reading. We also need to teach them how to make inferences, use context clues, and scaffolds to think about vocabulary.What did you learn in this chapter and how will you apply it to your instruction?
The discussion on page 175 and 176 helped to reinforce my learning that it is important to model the use of vocabulary instruction to think more deeply about words as we want students to understand academic vocabulary to pass the tests and to be a successful reader. I learned the importance of students learning to understand vocabulary when reading the state test. The question asked students to identify the central idea of the passage. The central idea? Really? I had spent many instructional hours modeling and allowing different ways for students to identify the main idea. Needless to say, I had 5 fourth grade students looking at me with confused faces. I knew then that I needed to rethink my vocabulary instruction and the chapters I read this week have given me new ideas to teach students to think about words. I will read text to decide what words to preteach and model the scaffolds discussed. The scaffold that I think would help students understand that central and main idea are synonyms is the Semantic Map discussed on p. 186 and figure 11.1. Students are required to identify synonyms and antonyms, and write the word in a sentence.
Small groups. Do you incorporate these into your teaching? How could you?
I am fortunate to teach small groups daily as a Resource Room teacher. Students get more individual attention and instruction to meet them where they are.Name and Summarize (a few sentences about the “other” chapter you read.
I read chapter 11: Preteaching Vocabulary. This chapter focused on deciding which words to preteach and scaffolds to help students think more deeply about vocabulary in order to understand definitions in a vast amount of text. Beers stated; “slow down, read carefully, and consider which words are critical for students to understand the central message. If those words aren’t defined in the text (and often they will be), define them before students read.” (p.184). The scaffolds to Preteach vocabulary discussed in this chapter; Semantic Maps, Word Clusters, Word, Axes, and Linear Arrays. All of the scaffolds discussed in this chapter let the students do the work! The scaffold that stuck out to me the most was a Linear Array. A Linear Array requires students to arrange a cluster of words along a continuum to help their understanding of a target word. The example used in the text asked students the question; What are all the words you know that could describe how messy or clean your room is? The target room was immaculate. Students then brainstormed a list and arranged the words in order from trashy to perfect.