Blog 5

Imagine this : you’re a third grade student. You walk into class Monday morning and you look at the board to see what? Yes, your weekly spelling AND vocabulary words.  Where are these words coming from? You write them three time and look up the definition in the dictionary. Thursday your teacher reviews with a fun game them WHAM- you have to spelling and vocabulary test Friday. Saturday and Sunday you forget every word you just learned and repeat the whole thing the next Monday.  What is the point exactly?

                There are so many problems with that whole week of vocabulary learning because… there is no learning. The students do not retain a single thing! Is there one meaning or multiple means? (because when I was in school we were told to just write the first definition we saw) if they saw it in text would they be able to identify and comprehend what it means?— “Knowing the word means more than definition” according to Fisher and Frey and they are right.  Memorizing the words and definition in one word is: useless.   It is the schema that allows us to read the word and use context clues along with general vocabulary to really comprehend vocabulary in text.  Rote memorization plays such a big role in vocabulary because words are rarely derived from text. So, where exactly are teachers getting these words that we write and define so much and why are the words they pick more important than the words a story that we are already engaged in? hmm.

                I was shocked that I did not remember wordwalls when I was little. I don’t even remember vocabulary in high school?! The most important time for vocabulary to be instilled in our brains (because of exit exam and ACT test) and I can’t remember a single thing when it comes to learning vocabulary.  This made me think about how hard it would be for ELL’s to be able to make a transition to English in the secondary. The box about ELL also stood out to me and made me think: I mean, MY GOSH… every word has 2 or more different meanings, multiple words that mean the same, and then there is no real vocabulary strategies in high school for students to learn how to take that word and know what it means without having to define it and write it 3 times. Vocabulary strategies can be childish—but there has to be some other “cooler” ways to learn vocabulary… right?

The technology we used this week is one of my favorite ways to learn.  I love taking test online, on my phone, or even a multiple choice test – WHEN IT DOESN’T MEAN ANYTHING. I love not having the stress of remembering everything or worrying about a grade and just taking to see how i would do….and then the feeling you get when you do better than you thought you would do it the best feeling ever.  I actually have a Praxis II app on my phone that allows me to take sample test that would be like taking the actual test- it really have made me feel a lot better about the Praxis J I think for students that can be a confidence booster also and is something I plan on incorporating into my classroom! I could really see this being used in a science class.  There are so many outlets for online science tools! I also think this would be good for math because the visual examples could show the problem step by step with can ALWAYS be beneficial.