Re: Week 2 Vocabulary

Synthesis:
           This weeks reading got me thinking about my own vocabulary teaching and how I have taught vocabulary in the past.  The chapter and D2L readings inspired me to dig deeper and have a better understanding of how teaching vocabulary, even in the younger grades, has a profound impact on one's life.  I felt the over arching theme of all the readings was there has been a decline in teaching vocabulary.  All the readings seem to hit on the fact that vocabulary development is essential for success in school and life.
           Hinchman-Thomas:
This chapter discussed how important having a large vocabulary is.  The authors go on to explain what tier I,II, and III words are and how they are crucial for the understanding of subjects.  Words are learned many ways.  Good teachers understand that  students learn through a multitude of lenses: schema, modeling, mentors and coaches, socioeconomic status, reading, and relevance.  Active engagement is necessary in mastering new vocabulary.  The chapter gives 5 specific strategies for engaging vocabulary learning
          1. K-W-L charts (know, want to know, Learned)
          2. Teach-Teach- Trade
          3.  A Word a Day
          4. Root Words
          5. Digital Words

           Manzo, Manzo, Thomas:
This article stresses the importance of low and high frequency words.  I found it startling to read the statistic of students in 1940, knew the meaning of 80% of the words on the standardized test.  By the mid-90s, an average student scored 30% on that area.  Understanding that standardized testing uses a lot of low frequency words, teachers/districts need to get on board with teaching vocabulary.  Vocabulary instruction has been neglected.  The article seems to suggest this has happened over time.  Research has shown the importance of sustaining a rich vocabulary as a culture.  For example, research suggest, "word power is painlessly acquired way to feel and be more effective and, therefore, to raise self-esteem."  That is one aspect of the research suggest in this article.  There are many more that are convincing arguments as to why we need to sustain vocabulary development.  The two approaches to teach vocabulary are community of language and hybrid cultures and media.  The community of language approach suggest having a list of words that everyone in a school is using at a given time: principals, lunch helpers, crossing guards, everyone.   This would allow children to hear words over and over.  The next approach is hybrid culture and media.  The author suggest that the new literacy world is a common ground for students.  They come to share and learn through different modes of technology; their bias, cultures, and social status are not as big a deal.

               Harmon, Wood, Medina:
This articles discusses the importance of teaching vocabulary in content areas. Teachers  in content areas (mathematics, science, and social studies)  report having trouble explicitly teaching vocabulary.  The words are abstract and limited to mathematics, science, and social studies.  Many times students will only hear those words within those class.  Teaching vocabulary in these areas rely heavily on prior knowledge in those content subjects.  Though each subject has unique vocabulary, there are some similarities.  Each content area has technical terms, non technical terms, function or word clusters, unique representation, and common root words.  Knowing the significance of each area according to the  subject will help teachers teach the vocabulary better.  There are  key understandings that are essential to content vocabulary instruction.  They are as followed:
      1.  Vocabulary learning is closely tied to conceptual understanding.
      2.  Explicit instruction in content-area vocabulary builds and supports conceptual understandings.
      3.  Explicit instruction involves multiple, varied, and meaningful experiences with words.
      4.  Vocabulary learning occurs implicitly in content-area classroom.
      5.  The structure of expository texts can impact vocabulary learning.
      6.  Classroom instruction time for learning vocabulary is necessary and must be sufficient.
      7.  Metacognitive awareness of vocabulary learning fosters independent learning in the different
           content areas.
      8.  Different content- area words require different types of instruction.

A student who knows words and knows them well, will have a better understanding of the world around them.  As teachers it is important to continually seek new and interesting ways to incorporate vocabulary instruction.  If teachers do not make it a priority, we are at risk, as a society, of losing the essence of our beautiful language.  
       
Response:
These articles and chapter got me really excited and thinking about my own teaching of vocabulary while growing up and how I actually teach vocabulary.  I honestly only remember seeing a list of vocabulary words at the beginning of my text book chapter.  I then was suppose to go look up each word and put it in a special note book.  This was boring and mundane.  I learned very little from it.  To me it seemed like a time suck for the student and teacher.  I realized that in the older grades, my teachers did very little in explicitly teaching vocabulary.  I guess they assumed it was the elementary teachers job and I should already know everything or at least have the skills to figure it out.  Luckily I had them, but I'm sure that wasn't the case for a lot of student.  Therefor, they went on reading, having no understanding of the content.
       As an early childhood teach I feel we do a pretty good job of teaching vocabulary.  I know this is because students have the drive to want to learn and the excitement.  It makes teaching pretty easy.  When your audience is constantly asking, "why, why, why," they have the desire and the teaching just happens.  I do not have the experience of teaching older students, but I can imagine each year a student progress through the grades, it becomes more of a challenge of how to present vocabulary in a new exciting way.

Questions:
1.  How do you "not" teach to the test when all the standardized testing is tier 2 and 3 words?  It just seems like somehow teachers always get roped back into teaching to the test.  It feels like a trap teachers face daily.  I feel like all you would need to do is get a hold of the supposed testing terms for the test and just teach those.  Seems to diminish learning and teaching.  I know this question is rhetorical but I can't help but wonder this question throughout all the readings.

2.  As an early childhood teacher,  I'd love to hear some of the explicit ways you teach vocabulary in your classroom.  I'm always trying to add to my resource database.