Vocabulary Chapter 3

Vocabulary 

Great gap between

required demands

of 88, 500 words

to spoken words 

of no more than 7,000.

Students acquire many

words from

reading independently

shared readings

and read-alouds. 

Lack of vocabulary

leads to a STRUGGLE

in ALL content area classes.

Also, has great impact

on reading comprehension. 

In the past 

was not its own.

It was intertwined

with

Comprehension

or

Word recognition

Teach words in isolation,

maybe not

Teach words using text 

a hodgepodge

therefore not so much.

Word Schema

or knowing a word

More than just a 

single definition. 

Understanding the context, 

 and morphology
to hypothesize the meaning.

Concepts or Labels? 

Concepts

much more important to teach
than labels. 

Avoid

a one size fits all approach.

Assess all students 

to find the instructional level. 

Vocabulary Self-Awareness

is a good way to see 

who knows what in the class. 

Currently, 

vocabulary instruction

seek to integrate varied methods. 

Four principles 

of successful  instruction

as seen by Blachowicz and Fisher. 

One- Be actively involved in word learning
Two- make personal connections

Three- be immersed in vocabulary

Four- consolidate meaning through multiple sources. 

Types?

General 

specialized 

and technical. 

Strategies there are many

In all subjects you see. 

From word walls,

Personal dictionaries,

Analyzing words

Learning multiple meanings 

Noticing slight differences in meaning

and learning vocabulary as 

Part of Speech 

in English. 

To Social Studies 

where one might see

semantic feature analysis

and movement in role-play. 

Technical vocabulary

of Mathematics

using a sequence of 

“introduce,” “define,” “discuss,” and “apply” 

using journals 

to develop vocabulary specific to 

geometry or other content area. 

Word sorts, 

are great for 

developing vocabulary

in science. 

Repetition can 

be used in elective classes

such as music.

Visual representation 

is yet another way. 

These strategies

can be used in ALL 

content areas

to improve vocabulary. 

Have I got a question for you: Chapter 5

Questioning facilitates comprehension and critical thinking and should be used by teachers in classrooms. Easy enough concept, right? It seems this would be the case, but according to Fisher and Frey questioning loses its effectiveness when the teachers do all of the questioning. Teachers rely on the IRE (initiate, respond, evaluate) cycle of questioning which is a teacher centered teaching approach. Teachers should include reciprocal questioning, higher order questioning and many different questioning strategies in order to model and 

Reciprocal questioning includes logos (logic), ethos (writer/writing), and pathos (emotions). These types of questions help students develop an understanding of arguments made by authors or speakers. This helped me in class validate the claims made by the speaker in the TED video.

Higher order thinking (HOT) questions are based on the levels of Bloom's taxonomy. This "balanced" form of questioning is just not that, balanced. The lowest levels make up 70% of all questioning in classrooms, whereas the HOT questions make up only 30% of questions. We as educators must incorporate HOT questions in order to help create successful adults.

There are many strategies explained the two that really interested me were the ReQuest strategy and SQRQCQ strategy. I was interested in ReQuest because it seems like it resembles a game of sorts. The taking turns being the questioner and the respondent makes me think of a game show. I really liked that Fisher and Frey demonstrate the effectiveness of the strategy with ELLs in a social studies class. Not only does this chapter emphasize the usefulness of these strategies with ELLs but also the use of this particular strategy in social studies seems would make it more engaging for the students. The SQRQCQ, or the survey, question, reread, question, compute, and question strategy also focused on ELLs and appeals to me for the main reason that is was specially adapted from the SQ3R strategy to use in math classrooms. I needed strategies such as this in school, especially high school, that would help me break down and comprehend math problems more effectively. This strategy will definitely help me in the near future while teaching math.

As we can see, teachers need to incorporate student-centered questioning in their classrooms in order to help create high functioning future adults. Teachers can do this by reciprocal questioning, HOT questioning and using a variety of instructional strategies in their classrooms.

Chapter 7: Notetaking and note making

            Some people would probably rather get teeth pulled than read a chapter on teaching notetaking. I am not one of those people. Personally, if I didn’t know a notetaking strategy that worked for me I most likely would have struggled in high school and would continue to struggle currently. After reading this chapter I realized that my notetaking skills could be improved especially after reviewing the “Notes evaluation criteria” in figure 7.4.

            One thing that surprised me was finding out that there is a difference between “notetaking” and “note making.” I always assumed they were one in the same. All of the types of notetaking styles were very interesting to read about. The style that caught my interest the most was the “Cornell” style of notetaking. This style peaked my interest so much that I actually did more research on the style and am really considering using this style to replace the style that I currently use. The part of this style that really grabbed me was how much more organized it looked (fig. 7.1) compared to the notes I take.

            Never, in my entire life, was I directly taught a strategy to take notes. I was taught how to copy notes from an overhead or fill in the blanks from a print-out I was given. I have always just taken notes in a similar fashion to how I copied notes off a projector, which results in an unorganized mess. We, as teachers, must teach our students a notetaking strategy if we expect them to be successful. This quote says it all to me, “better notetakers generally do better in school and specific types of notetaking produce better results (124).”

            I would have liked to a more in-depth reading that explained each type of notetaking style and how to teach each one. Much of what I read was a lot of in-depth scenarios depicting the use of notetaking styles in each subject area. This wasn’t a bad thing; I am just saying I feel I would have benefited more from the chapter if it focused on explanation versus scenarios. I did like the examples that were given in the figures because I was able to see how each type looked.

            While reading this chapter I realized two important things. First, there was and still is a lot of information I do not know about notetaking. Second, was the realization of the crucial importance of teaching students how to take notes. The question I leave with is, what is the grade appropriateness of teaching notetaking to students?

Graphic Organizer

Chapter 6

Picture This: Graphic Organizers in the Classroom

Inspiration: Concept Map

Read Alouds and Shared Readings

I really liked the fact that the chapter we read was based on read alouds and shared readings in the adolescent classroom, whereas, the article focused on the primary grades. I liked to see the similarities and differences (if there were any) between primary and high school grades using these strategies. The article, "Text Talk: Capturing the benefits of read-aloud experiences for young children,"  focused on "Text Talk," which is basically just an approach to read-alouds in which a student's ability to construct meaning from text is enhanced. I don't think I would have understood what the authors meant by "Text Talk" if they had not mentioned that it is very similar to Questioning the Author.The major difference is that Text Talk is aimed at read-alouds in the primary grades instead of independent reading in the intermediate and upper grades. The most interesting part of the article was the fact that students will sometimes rely too much on the pictures of a story for comprehension. I found this so interesting because I am currently experiencing this with a student. I now know from reading this article that I should wait to show this student the picture until after the student has answered any questions about that particular part of the story. I gained and was reminded of a lot of information while reading the article. The one aspect I did not particularly care for was that the article seemed very repetitive. I enjoyed the chapter, "Well Read: Promoting comprehension through read-alouds and shared readings," probably more than the article because first of all it addressed read-alouds and shared readings in all subjects areas. Second, it was also aimed toward adolescents which is a nice change since our other classes aim toward primary and elementary grades.   My favorite part of the chapter was how to successfully implement read-alouds and shared readings in all of the subject areas. I am a little nervous that I will not be able to focus on subjects like social studies if I cannot integrate language arts and social studies together. This chapter, the other chapters and the other articles that we have read have helped to ease the nervousness by providing great ways to integrate important language arts skills with other subject areas. The other part I particularly liked was that the chapter listed steps on how to plan and successfully implement read-alouds and shared readings into secondary classrooms.

Questions:

1. Why is it that read-alouds and shared readings are only recently researched and seen as beneficial in secondary classrooms?

2. Where can I find more information on comprehension with read-alouds and shared readings? 

Standards

I needed to get to three pages on my standards paper for social studies and really wanted to end with a witty quote. I couldn't find one online, so I made one up. "Education without standards is like food without the plate it is still needed, but is a complete mess." I just thought I would share because I thought it was pretty witty if I do say so myself. 

Writing to Learn

“Writing to learn is a tool we can use to see how students are thinking and understanding what they are doing and learning in the classroom” (chapter 8 p. 155). I gained a great amount of information from the article, Writing to learn across the curriculum: Tools for comprehension in content area classes by Knipper and Duggan and the chapter, Powerful Pens: Writing to learn with adolescents. Both of the readings dealt with writing to learn strategies. I really liked learning about the strategies that are available and ways to incorporate them into a classroom.

My favorite strategy from Knipper and Duggan’s article was the structured note taking. I don’t necessarily believe that all students need to be forced to take notes in this way; however, I think it is very important for students to learn an effective way to take notes. I do not remember any specific lesson in which I was specifically taught an effective note taking strategy. I believe this applies to many people in my generation.   Effective note taking not only benefits writing to learn, but also saves class time when students are taking notes.

Something else I wanted to mention was the biopoem. When we learned about this in class and while reading the article I realized that it looked really familiar. This weekend I was going through some storage bins and I found two pieces of writing that looked just like the biopoem. One of the writings I found was an actual biopoem. The other was actually an autobiography poem. Which I remembered doing in Junior High as an ice breaker one of the first days of class. I vividly remember loving this assignment because I was able to learn about my classmates. Without being overly outgoing, I was able to see what I might have in common with these peers that I didn’t know. I realized that my teacher had probably adapted the biopoem to an autobiography poem; this realization made me start thinking about how I might adapt some of the strategies to different students.

This brings me to chapter 8 from the book which talked a lot about strategies for adolescents. This chapter brought up that writing to learn is especially important for English Language learners because it allows them to order their ideas in written form. It made me think that it must also be very important for students with reading and writing difficultly, problems with comprehension, students with special needs and learners that learn better from writing their thoughts down. One of my favorite strategies from the book was the “I AM” poem. I remember writing one of these in seventh grade. After we got our rough drafts written we were grouped according to similar interests and were able to read our poems to our groups members. I also really liked using “admit slips” or “entry slips” as writing prompts. The topics the teacher can chose from are endless, from what they learned to what they hope to learn to what they already know.

All in all, I gained a lot from both the article and the book. I think I preferred reading the article better that the article. I really am not sure why except I found the article more interesting and was able to more easily read it than the chapter. I will definitely use the strategies from both the article and the chapter in my future classrooms.

Questions about this article and/or chapter:

What are some effective ways to adapt some of these strategies for different learners or adapt them to fit a different purpose?

Where can I find different ways to effectively take notes or teach effective note taking skills?