- By 04/10/17 - Post your plan here
- After 04/10/17 - Respond meaningfully to at least one colleague no later than 04/17/17
- Respond to your own initial post after you have had the chance to use the strategy and report about how it worked with your students
Wednesday, March 15, 2017
Appendix - Menu of Instructional Activities
Select one of the activities that you have not yet implemented from the Appendix (pp. 183-193), and develop an instructional plan to use with your students.
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I chose to try a Word Association strategy(variation 1 on p. 187) to try with my students. The target words came from a lesson in the Sidewalks program--apologize, citizen, judgement, law, and scold.
ReplyDeleteThe strategy indicates to ask which of the following comments goes best with the target word.
I came up with the following comments:
1. I was really upset when the dog dug up all my flowers in the garden.
2. I broke broke your favorite toy and I want you to forgive me.
3. When I walk down the street I see a lot of people who live in Mio.
4. You must be 16 to get a driver's license and drive a car.
5. The judge sentenced the thief to 2 years in jail.
I plan on trying this strategy this week with my students. I think I will also ask them why they would choose that word. So no guessing!!
Hi Barb, I believe these questions will encourage your students to ponder and put a lot of thought into why they would choose that word.
DeleteIt will be interesting to see if your students can justify different words to match with each of these statements. Sometimes the kids "think outside of the box" much more than I do!
DeleteI felt that this activity went well with my class. I had the words on cards so that the students could see the choices. I had expected that they would do well with choosing the correct word but was surprised at how well they were able to explain their choices. I took it a step further and let them write their own comments. This was more challenging, but a couple of the students were very creative. I would definitely try this activity again with other words.
DeleteNow it will be interesting to see if they are able to use the words in two weeks, a month, etc. if the opportunity arises.
DeleteI am using 5 words from The Paint Brush Kid with a group of 3rd graders. I am going to do Variation 3 of Example/Non-Example first (pg. 185). When that is successful, I'd like them to do more with Variation 4 in Word Relationships (pg. 190). The words are pasture, vines, freeway, concrete, mope. I really want them to see pasture and vines in the "rural" story setting then freeway and concrete in the "urban" part of the story. Mope will describe the character in the last setting.
ReplyDeletePlease share some of the sentences you will use to prompt students during the example.non-example activity.
DeleteYesterday we did pasture and vines. They were able to recall both today; however, the student who knew pasture right away yesterday struggled today - he continued to be stuck on "goat" which is an animal he used in his description of pasture yesterday. Vines were successful and today we did freeway - a couple had the experience of driving to Florida (I75 and 70 MPH).
Deletepg. 185 example/non
What would you usually find in a pasture?
*farm animals *a school
Where would you most likely find vines? a freeway?
*Mio *a jungle * a city
When would you probably mope?
*on your way to clean your room *after hitting a triple
pg. 190 word relationships
I feel positive that they are seeing the difference in rural areas in the book and the urban areas by our discussion of the first 3 words. We will continue to do this for the rest of the week using the first book, this book, and our discussions.
Thanks for the clarifying examples. It definitely sounds as if the students are on the right track.
DeleteThe first three were a success: pasture, vines, freeway.
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DeleteYour simple explanations and examples make it easy for the kids to answer. I like the relationships and making the connections to their own world. Awesome!
DeleteAll words have been introduced and we practice for a minute each day prior to our reading as we review what we already read and prepare for the day's reading.
DeleteOne thing I do with them (it is a small group so it is easy) is have them physically move the words (they are on index cards) so they are together and they see they relationships between them.
I love the idea of movement, although I'm cautious to try it every time!! Small group is perfect for this, but whole class is a little bit more dangerous!
DeleteI am using vocabulary from Leah's Pony, a read aloud that's part of our Historical Fiction unit. The words I will be using are girth, glistened, clustered, and wobbled. I plan to do word associations variation 1 (pg 187) as part one and then I want to follow that up with variation 2. My students struggle to give reasons/explanations for an association. They can identify they easily, but when it comes to explaining their thinking or "why" they struggle, so I think this will be helpful...or a complete disaster, but I have to keep trying and supporting when necessary.
ReplyDeleteI will use them when I am in at Workshop Conferencing time too! This is helpful.
DeleteIt sounds as if this will be a good way to extend their vocabulary knowledge above recall level.
DeleteI am using vocabulary from Johnny Tremain, an historical fiction read aloud for Reader's Workshop. The words I used are wharf, swinish, autocratic, brackish, pious, wrathfully and squabs. I used word relationships, variation #2. For example: If a person is considered autocratic, could they be swinish? If you were pious would you do something wrathfully?, Would the water surrounding a wharf be brackish? Could an autocratic person be pious or wrathful? After presenting the questions to the students, I would ask them to give me a reasonable explanation why they had answered the question that way.
ReplyDeleteI already used this strategy last week, and my students did a great job thinking about the two words and definitions to explain why they answered the questions.
DeleteThe idea of questioning using two of the words, especially those that do not have a straightforward connection, should be a strong technique to extend student thinking about vocabulary beyond simple recall or memorization. Give us a little more detail about how the strategy went and examples of student responses if possible.
DeleteIn order to be successful at this word activity, I would think that the students would really have to "own" these words. I am curious to know how the students we share did with this activity.
DeleteThis sounds tough, I am glad they did well! Way to push their thinking and justification of their responses!
DeleteI thought I already replied to this, but I guess it didn't post. I am in pretty shocked at the difficulty of these words and I'm not even sure I'd be able to answer these questions. Good for you for pushing their thinking!!
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ReplyDeleteI've chosen Writing Variation 1 (p. 192) - I will give the students one or two sentence stems today after our reading from The Tale of Despereaux at story time. They will then copy/complete the sentence stems in their reading journals.
ReplyDeleteHow did this strategy work with your students?
DeleteI think it's been good. We've done it a few times now. Word choice is really important because some of the words are too easy and some are too hard. Ideally, it seems like you need to pick the words that the students somewhat understand, and then writing the sentences pushes that understanding to a deeper level.
DeleteI'm going to keep this simple because I'm super behind. My plan is to do more "WRITING". I like Variation 2 and I'm planning on using it with my Intervention Reading Kids. I might use some of variation 1 also, and having sentence stems with tier 2 words and then extend it. Something quick easy and simple.
ReplyDeleteLet us know how it went. I am interested in comparing and contrasting 2nd (Mrs. Demory) and 3rd grade since it sounds as if you may be using similar approaches.
DeleteMatt, I'd love to hear more about what you did as I did a writing activity (late also )
DeleteSO.....SUPER DUPER LATE....my activity took all hour, which I expected, but it was nice to see how the kids handled the lesson. I just used variation 1 and the sentence stems. We used these words from our book, "Flight from Bear Canyon", abruptly, veer, tedious, and torrent.
DeleteI first went over the words and had the students try to come up with a definition.
I then used the sentence stems to help lead them in coming up with the correct definition.
We then discussed this process and the students verbally used the word in their own sentence and their own definition.
i see that I did not hit "publish" again. Well, what I planned was to use "Example, Non-Example" for my strategy. We are reading "Mayday, Mayday!" and the word I am using is RESCUE. I am presenting situations and the students are to respond with, "Rescue Me" if it fits the situation. Some examples are, "Your foot is stuck in the mud so deep that you can't get it out on your own", "You have 5 cookies on you plate and you are getting full".
ReplyDeleteThat sounds like so much fun! It kind of reminds me of The boy who cried wolf too. A little cross text talk?
DeleteThis also make me think of The Worst-Case Scenario books. I wonder if you could pull ideas from those?
DeleteWell, overall they had a lot of fun with the "Example, Non-Example" activity. As with most classes, the majority of the children understood the activity and could rationalize why they answered "Yes" or "No".
DeleteI am WAY behind the 8 ball on this assignment, but happily I have been continuing to try some of the vocab techniques in our book anyway. Twice (last week and this week) I had the 6th graders read an informative selection, with subject specific vocabulary. Last week it was a piece about Jane Goodall and her work with Chimpanzees. In the initial lesson the students read a short selection with some targeted vocab words like sanctuary and captivity. They discussed these in length, giving several examples of situations in which one would be captive or feel as if they were in a sanctuary.
ReplyDeleteAFter reading the main selection, I asked them to write a persuasive essay on whether zoos were valuable or not? Before they wrote we brainstormed a list of vocabulary words they could use in their essay.
I found that their AAPs were much more detailed and included specific examples from both the text and our in class discussions. I was so pleased with the strategy I employed it again this week, with similar results.
That's awesome that they transferred that skill to writing with such a simple strategy! Very promising for the future!
DeleteIt's definitely a sign that they "own" the words when they can use them properly in writing!
DeleteVery compelling subject matter, Amanda! I like the idea of brainstorming the vocabulary ideas with them instead of leading them to the words you would like them to make as their own.
DeleteAs I look at all of these wonderful ideas our delightful staff has generated, I was thinking about how some of these ideas could be "taught" across the grade levels by the other students. For example, we work with the pre-school to teach them different things (how to line up, how to hold a book and track words, how to play safely on the equipment outside...) I would love it if another grade level would like their students to come with maybe posters to teach our children different words and their meanings. Just a thought....
ReplyDelete