As I mentioned last week, I've lucky enough to work at a school that gives teachers ownership of professional development. This year as I focus on my vocabulary instruction and teaching strategies, I will be sharing the journey here at Teach Happy. Sometimes in my class we use technology and make crazy fun videos. Sometimes we do something simple, like the List Three strategy I used last week. This strategy is found in the Appendix of Bringing Words to Life by Beck, McKeown, and Kucan, the book I'm using for some of my vocabulary instruction ideas. I haven't crawled through much of the theory at the beginning of the book, but so far I've found a few helpful activities to use with our word lists. Because my ultimate goal is word ownership, not just test regurgitation, I want students to hear and see how these words are applied, especially in their daily lives. This List Three activity asks students to "generate appropriate contexts or situations for statements or questions about their words." It took me about 15 minutes to create the activity based on pre-selected word lists. For each of the words we are working with, students are asked to generate a list of three examples according to a specific task. For example, last week in College Composition, one of our SAT words was "reconciliation," so I asked students to list three actions they might see during a reconciliation. Answers included hugs, hand shakes, and even crying. Another word was "ostentatious," so they had to list three behaviors they consider to be ostentatious. One answer that gave us a few laughs was driving a limo to school every day. I had students work independently first, and then we came together as a group to discuss our lists. I encouraged students to add what they deemed the best ideas from their classmates to their own lists. (I figure more exposure means more ownership.) Next time I will probably have them work in small groups to discuss their way through the list. This activity builds brain bridges as students create connections with words. They are saying these words, using them, and applying them to contexts within their own worlds. And best yet, it was successful. A few students asked for this strategy again because it they really felt like they were learning the words. I'm seeing them in more of their writing, too. Yippee! You can see the handout I gave students here. Feel free to steal and modify as you would like. This week I will use this handout with my English 2 students as we use the same strategy to own our Unit 2 Words in Context. This activity doesn't take much prep time, and I feel like it was time well spent as my students begin to own more complex words. What do you think? Is the List Three activity something you will use in your classroom? How can you modify it to work for you?
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September 2020
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