Chapter 9

Okay this chapter addressed a problem I have been very concerned about even as a student in high school... vocabulary. Like most students I had the weekly 20 words and the weekly test and at home my dad made me write out the words and their definition fives times each. This was horribly boring work and very tedious, also I am sure I learned little to nothing from it. Just like the teachers described in this chapter most of the words assigned I have used very little, if ever, and certainly forgot after the test I had to have them memorized them for. By shortening the list of words and making the words useful to students the teacher can easily TEACH student vocab SUCCESSFULLY!!! I feel that interaction added to information always allows a student to learn better. So why not do it with vocab? As I believe I have said in this blog before, making the material useful and important to the students is key to teaching them the information. There are always ways to interact with the information. Specifically I think strategies such as synonymous words and picture representation of those words allow most learning types to intake the information needed. I realize that vocabulary is inherently dull but part of our job as the teacher is to be creative enough to teach all things to all students.

Also in this chapter I feel Kylene Beers made an important point on page 202 regarding involving students. It is important to ask specific questions about what the student knows. This forces the student to consider, accept and report their experience, this is information many students do not have and can not access. More importantly this is information you as a teacher rarely have access to and can be key to helping that student succeed. However, if the right questions are not asked the student can not give the right information. Beers states that this information is important to know about the students word knowledge but I feel it is applicable in every aspect of teaching.