Our reading this week was on chapter 3 involving vocabulary. I liked this chapter because it didn't JUST give a bunch of jargon and mumbo jumbo about vocabulary... It also gave a side that we often do not think about, which is the students perspective by allowing us (the teachers) to see inside of what we may do to a student if we kept pushing them into reading rather than making it something enjoyable for them. Of course, I'm talking about the section in the chapter titled "Struggling Readers--DO NOT SIMPLY NEED MORE BASIC SKILLS"from this I connected with everything the author was trying to say and in turn I ended up getting kinda mad because I was having flashbacks to periods of my life where I can pinpoint when things were going south for me in 4th grade as a student. I was held back in the 4th grade because I wasn't really ready to move on to the next grade because my brain simply had not matured and I was more self motivated internally because I loved my new teacher and really wanted to please her. "An adolescent who reads on a fourth grade level is not the same as a fourth grader, and using materials and approaches effective at fourth grade will not yield positive results."--Fisher and Frey. Students need to feel valued and need to have motivation that they value when completing a task. I didn't feel like my teacher liked me very much by my teacher the first time around in fourth grade. However, my second time in fourth grade was a true success because my teacher created confidence within me, made me feel special, and gave me self worth.
Vocabulary in Mathematics is another section I enjoyed reading about mostly because I want to teach Mathematics and I found this to be rather helpful information for me. What I took from this section was that I need to teach vocabulary as I also teach the skill of the vocabulary word. Therefore, my students will learn what the vocabulary word means and also practice applying the skill too. Something we learned Friday from our Professional Development Seminar with the Teacher Artists was that I can apply, assess, and recall vocabulary words just by getting students to stand up and "show me" what the word means. If I have taught the students and explained to them and modeled each vocabulary word for them then applying the knowledge in this context by using your creativity to "show me" that you know what the word means will also help me gage where everyone in the class is based on how much they can express. I definitely believe in using many different strategies to build students comprehension and schema, but I also whole heartedly feel that allowing a student free range of creativity while learning a new concept would be effective too.
This morning as I was teaching my first service Sunday School class I decided to grad a friend to take some pictures for me in order to post them for you guys!
Questions:
How can we as teachers show our students they are worth valuing?
Why do you think students respond so negatively in a classroom if they don't necessarily have a strong connection with their teacher?
