What did you learn in this chapter and how will you apply it to your instruction?
One of the biggest take aways I had from this chapter were the different tiered vocabulary words. Vocabulary has been a big push in our building for a few years which is why I try to incorporate it each week but alas I don't believe this to be very effective. When I made my word selection for the week it was focused on academic words. However, a major flaw with this was that I was inconsistent with using the same word, rather I would use synonyms which I am sure was confusing for my students who already have a weaker vocabulary. Additionally, I am sure that all teachers in our grade were not on the same page when it came to using the same academic words. Overall, this would be confusing for students and counterproductive in some instances.
Name & Summarize (a few sentences) about the “other” chapter you read.
I was very interested in Chapter 14: Spelling because I do recall those weekly spelling tests in grade school. Additionally, it seems like spelling is becoming a lost art. In this chapter, you are given stages of spelling and what ages/ grades each level of spelling should include. This acts as an indicator as to where each student is in their understanding of the complicated English language. It further iterates the importance of spelling for job applications, correspondence with colleagues and that decoding abilities are improved in conjunction with spelling ability.