A Focus on Vocabulary, V-O-C-A-B-U-L-A-R-Y
Vo-ca-bu-la-ry. Students must continue reading at home as well as in school to improve their vocabulary. Vo-ca-bu-la-ry.
When I was in elementary school, I remember having to undergo various exercises to increase my vocabulary. Much of the activities for the most part revolved around an actual period devoted to Spelling in which we would go through a spelling pre-test on monday, learn the words throughout the week and apply them to the material in all the other subjects I was learning, and then a post-test which actually counted for marks. I also remember using a work book called “Close Passages” that was supposed to help increase my reading comprehension through answering multiple choice questions about the reading. I also remember that we had some kind of reading activity three times a week in which we were assessed and sorted by comprehension level based on our understanding of readings we had in our sessions. We also had the opportunity to move up levels if our comprehension proved to be sufficient for the next level.
Overall, these activities created a lot of competition for many of us in seeing who could achieve the highest possible mark. We never did these things in order to increase our vocabulary (because what child wants to do that voluntarily). Throughout elementary and high school after lunch, there would always 25 minutes devoted to Silent Reading and we were also encouraged to read at home anything we wanted to read as well. There does need to be some kind of balance or control as to what material should be read depending on the grade level so students can be challenged to expand their oral and print vocabulary.
As teachers, the language we use in the classroom will definitely allow us to motivate our students to expand their understanding and influence (hopefully) the words they choose both in the classroom and on the playground. We must also be facilitators and be careful with our own word choice and sentences so that our students may be able to be aware of their own. Case in point, the example used in the article about a child’s interaction with her parent:
Child: Look! I painted.
Parent: You painted the whole picture by yourself?
By doing this, the parent “signals a request for the child to tell more” (Lehr et. al., 6), which encourages the child to be in conversation.