The topic of vocabulary is undoubtedly one of the most important subjects that students can learn and that teachers should focus on teaching. Vocabulary is used in every day life. The more words one knows, the most intelligent they come off as. As teachers, we want to make sure that students feel confident in their vocabulary so they are not the only one in a group of people who do not know the meaning of a word used in an every day conversation.
The techniques that they describe seem to be useful and I will probably implement some of them-- especially the use of concept circles. Concept circles is a brilliant idea! The way that I remember things is best is if I can group whatever I am trying to remember with other things. For example, if I want to remember a characteristic of a poet it is helpful for me to know the characteristics of the time period as well. So if a teacher can construct concept circles that make sense than they can be very effective for learners like myself.
It is of my opinion, however, that the best way to expand one's vocabulary is to read and read a lot. This is why the topic of vocabulary can be a hard one to tackle because it is so hard to regulate how much a student reads. Even if one assigns a substantial amount of readings, there is still no guarantee that the student will be reading all that is assigned. And if a student does all of the readings, a teacher can still not be sure if the student is looking up the meaning of new words that they come across. In an ideal world, all students would be reading their readings and reading for enjoyment on a daily basis but this will just never be the case. This chapter would have been even more impacting on me if there was a section on techniques for motivating students to read outside of school as well as motivating them to do their reading assignments.
yes, absolutely, kids need to read, read, read! I'm thinking as I read this after your post about technology that using video books talks might be a good way to get kids to read outside of class because they can both benefit from hearing others' present because they might be more interested in picking up the book and from presenting as it gives them more motivation to really "picture the words" as they read as they will get a chance to visually represent the text. I especially liked your idea about making an entire book-length video with students working in groups!
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