![]() How about a comparison? Rope is like stringer, but thicker and stronger because it is made of several strands. ![]() What category does rope belong to? Tools or things we can tie, perhaps. I would also want the students to come up with some synonyms for rope (e.g., cord, twine, string), and a real example (like “my mom uses rope for a clothesline in our basement” or “we have a rope that the girls play jump rope with during recess”). Say you wanted to teach the word rope. The dictionary definition is “a length of strong cord made by twisting together strands of natural fibers such as hemp or artificial fibers such as polypropylene.” But that’s not good enough. ![]() Consequently, one of my favorite vocabulary activities is to have students writing multiple “definitions” for words, rather than single definitions. Focus on the encyclopedia description more than the dictionary definition. Students learn words best when they have opportunities to think of words deeply-rather than just through definitions. Here are some recommendations about how that teaching can be successful: You can also teach some particularly important or powerful words explicitly to help accelerate student progress in vocabulary. Students need to be encouraged to pay attention to words. That, in fact, should be a big part of the classroom context: understanding and communicating are important in this classroom and words are a big part of that. Having kids read challenging materials-that is materials that use words they might not yet know, and then drawing their attention to these words through questioning, etc. Beyond that, teachers should focus attention on some of these words, by providing explanation of the words, or having the students explaining them from context themselves. Kids need lots of opportunities to confront words in their reading and listening. Vocabulary learning is incremental and there are more words that kids need to learn than we can teach. Struggling readers tend to be a bit slower in picking things up and consequently they tend to benefit a bit more from explicit teaching and increased repetition-but the same patterns of success are to be expected from everyone. What I mean by that is that usually, when it comes to teaching, what works with some kids, works with all or most kids. Vocabulary is one of the many areas of instruction that one doesn’t find much in the way of interactions. I know of no special ways of teaching vocabulary to that group of students. What do you recommend is the best way to teach vocabulary to struggling readers at the middle school level? ![]() This blog entry straightforwardly addresses what it takes to develop this resource in our students. This is both an issue of knowledge of the world and language, since vocabulary is the connection between these key reading assets. It is important that students develop rich vocabulary. What it took to teach vocabulary effectively was as true then as it is now. What I mean by that I didn’t need to change a word. ![]() Blast from the Past: This blog first posted August 16, 2015, and was reposted on September 25, 2021.This blog entry is an evergreen. ![]()
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