Ch. 9 Vocabulary

I remember all the school years I spent looking at a list of words, finding the definition, memorizing them for the test, and forgetting them immediately after.If I remembered all of those words today, I would have a huge vocabulary. The point is that I did not remember most of these words over the years, which was the whole point of me memorizing all of those words, obviously this method is not beneficial. I laughed when I read the section about the teachers who agreed to memorize their vocab lists early and use them in class, and complained that it was way too many words and some of which they couldn't use.

All of the suggestions for teaching vocab in this chapter are really important if we want student's to actually expand their vocabulary. I feel that it is important that students actually hear teachers use these words in their own vocab so that they can see how the words work. It is also important that we teach kids how to use context clues not just tell them to re-read and look at the context clues. Beers also mentions a point that was not so obvious to me which is to do some vertical planning with the other teachers in your school. All of the other lessons are important as well but when I heard lesson 7 I was surprised at how much silent reading helped students as well as reading out loud. I actually know a middle school English teacher who lets students silent read a book of their choice every week and she got an award for teaching, and kids in her school had higher English grades than in neighboring districts. I also find the chart for suggestion eight very beneficial for finding out what students need help with.

I am relieved that as a teacher I can make vocab beneficial to my students some day, and also make it fun for them to figure out the meaning of words rather than testing them on a list of words every week that they will most likely forget.