RPI 6 - Vocabulary and Decoding

 Connecting with Manaiakalani

Once again Dorothy had lots of wonderful knowledge and tidbits.

Low-demographic students can miss 32 million words before they enter school, which is a huge amount to pull back.

However, I like that teaching vocabulary allows students to open doors. One of the easiest ways to do this is by reading to our children and students. Even newborns who can't open their eyes enjoy listening to familiar voices as that is how they connect with family from the womb.

I want to check out a few apps to help build a game-like challenge for students. Students from my class have been reflecting on other choice boards and asked: "Why don't we have more game-like activities in reading and writing?"

It was pointed out that Wordwall is a user pays.

I also like when the teacher doesn't have to make them all. Especially teaching Year 7 and 8 students love to be creative, making their own and sharing with others, shows what they know. However, I would spend the first term giving examples of what was expected.

Dorothy also reminded us about using smart chips (dates, people or map locations) and dropdowns. Providing students with an interactive Google Doc or opportunities to identify words by highlighting/finding specific words, such as verbs makes this achievable for struggling students.

Background Knowledge

Naomi's idea 'We can't think without words' placing vocabulary at the top of the ' Teach Learner to Think and Question Pillar'. While students may learn to decode and read text, they must grasp that letters form words and words convey ideas. With this understanding, they might make the necessary connections between decoding and comprehension.

 Low oral vocab is the reason for many of students issues with reading. So we need to be on target.

Allowing Learners the opportunity to rate their understanding of vocabulary in a story is a great self-assessment and then reassessed at the end of the week. It is also easy to reproduce for any text, as these are the ones I can see being used and students can become familiar with and be proud to blog about as they show progress.

I have been that teacher, overusing one or two activities (define, find synonyms/antonyms) and if I'm bored after a few weeks it can't be good for students. Although I used to use define as a dual purpose (understanding and dictionary skills).

Word Consciousness

I like the idea of being word-conscious, as an avid reader I find it fascinating when I come across a word I have heard but not seen and hear students use specific words or technical words my heart flutters.

Hearing them use intricate words is empowering for them and as a teacher.

As a reader, there are survival words that students need to understand or the text won't make sense, so it is important to teach them and expose words to students before reading.

Since COVID-19, I have been doing Rebus Puzzles with students to build understanding of word puzzles. I love the fact that to understand them students need to infer. Students were even explaining why or how they worked them out reinforcing their understanding or point of view and helping others to work them out next time, as we often found similar puzzles at different times.

Explicit, Robust Vocabulary Learning Opportunities

For this to work we need to know which words to focus on. In teaching Years 7 and 8 most students recognise the high-frequency words.

This image is unclear but I appreciate the sample of Tier 2 words given. E.g. hilarious, endure, despise, arrange, compare and contrast.

Whereas Tier 3 is content or job-specific. An electrician would know 'reactance and relay' but a doctor might not. And a doctor would know 'immunosuppressed and oedema', whereas an electrician may not.

Tier 2 words are important as they don't come up in conversation often but impact student understanding of the text. Try to focus on 5-8 words a text.

Cracking Unfamiliar Words

Papakura Achievement Initiative (PAI 2005-2015), schools in Papakura focussed on Literacy,  and part of that was through Joy Allcock's Switched on to Spelling. With my previous experience with Jolly Phonics, I got the consonant-vowel patterns. This was a good reminder to revisit this with struggling readers to identify sounds they find tricky so they can identify patterns and work out words giving them independence with reading.

Time needs to be scheduled so it becomes part of the teaching programme not hit and miss. Deliberate Teaching!

Skill Builder - Questioning

Shared understanding helps students discuss and consolidate information. This can be achieved by using focused questions.

Where to Next?

• Sharing the spelling programme (The Code) as it goes from Year 1 to Year 10 and we are looking for a schoolwide programme.
• Using some if not all of Dorothy's ideas for spotlighting words in text such as dropdown and smart chips.
• Magpie Window/Wall or Word Wizards (on a window) as I have limited wall space. I also have mobiles I can hang for specific words (better words) that I need to dig out.