I found an article called Teaching Middle and High School Students to Read and Write Well written by four ladies from the National Research Center on English & Learning Achievement (Judith A. Lange, Elizabeth Close, Janet Angelis, and Paula Preller). I've never heard of this particular institution before now, but they do have a respectable sounding name, an .edu address, and the production values on their PDF file are top notch. The article isn't specifically about teaching vocab but does have a lot of information relevant to the subject.
The authors of this document argue that for English instruction to be relevant has to be integrated with other activities and skills. For example, a teacher could have their students read an somewhat advanced novel and each week's vocabulary instruction around a chapter or section of the book. Another exampled offered is "living dictionaries"; having students collect unknown words they've encountered in newspapers or books and sharing them with the class. Teachers need to be able to connect sometimes mundane class material with the real world and should continue to reference information learned earlier in the year.
I think the "living dictionaries" example is a great idea if you can motivate the students to use it. It also could help them develop habits to continue to learn new words they find even after they move onto other classes.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with the idea of connecting vocabulary to curriculum. I think that we've definitely been stressing that in class this past week. We know that students learn more if they're personally invested in what they are learning, so this living dictionaries activity would be great for relativity!
ReplyDelete