Monday, October 27, 2014
blog post: your choice, classroom observations
This semester I have had the opportunity to attend Logan High School to observe a ninth grade Biology class for my science methods course. In the class the students receive vocabulary words that they must learn for each unit in the class. After learning about how to use vocabulary instruction appropriately, I realized that the teacher does his vocabulary instructions in a very ineffective way. He hands out a list of their vocabulary words and has the students copy the definitions from the book. They do this on the first day of studying the unit, which means that most of them forget most of the words by the time they learn it. I think it would be more beneficial to teach the students the vocabulary words as you are going over them in the lecture. You could have the words highlighted on the PowerPoint, and then do some sort of review with the students at the end by having them play a matching game. It would also help if the students did something other than just copying the vocabulary words from the book. One thing that would be fun in the class is to play charades with the words because they are all scientific words, so it would be fun to watch some of the things the students would come up with for each of the words.
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That is interesting. I admit I have been in more than a few classes where the teacher does the exact same thing when teaching vocabulary. They just hand out a list and the students memorize textbooks definitions. And it really doesn't do any good because as soon as the test on that unit is over those words are forgotten. I really like the ideas that you have for teaching vocab more effectively. I think talking about them in the context of the lecture is really important and charades would be a fun way.
ReplyDeleteYikes. I think I know which teacher you're with. You're absolutely rights - it's not effective at all. In addition to students forgetting the words and not using them in context, I feel like doing "out-of-the-book" vocabulary just teaches students that "What teachers do is useless busy work, and isn't worth my time." And frankly, \sometimes they're right. Logan High School also has a large population of ELL students, so doing the activities you suggest could be really beneficial to that population!
ReplyDeleteI absolutely hated it when I had to copy definitions straight from a textbook. I never learned anything and like you mentioned it was usually done at the very beginning of the unit so by the end I had forgotten them all. I do like your idea of making the students actually have to think of the words and present them in a different way other than writing. I know as a student the things that stick with me are the things that I find challenging or different than the norm. Thanks for the idea of presenting vocabulary in a different way!
ReplyDeleteI am glad that you were able to have this experience. Sometimes the best lessons we learn are from bad examples. I like your idea of playing a matching game to review the words. This would also be a good assessment of what words the students have learned and the ones they are struggling with.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you whole-heartedly. Teaching vocabulary in isolation is much less effective than teaching it in context. I also love the charades idea, that seems like it could be really fun. I think that middle-schoolers would really enjoy it. I think there are so many activities out there to help our students learn. I think the key is to always be willing to try new things and not get stuck in one way of teaching. Nice reflection.
ReplyDeleteHi Kelbie:
ReplyDeleteNicole does work combining theatre and science, which might relate to your idea of charades. She will have a TED talk about it posted soon. In addition, biology is a discipline that includes a lot of morphemes, so teaching those morphemes (word parts) is also a good way to teach biology. I heard of an agriculture teacher who put different morphemes on dice (e.g., mono-; di-; pheno-; geno-) and (-hybrid, -type) and asked students to roll the dice and come up with definitions of the words based on the two dice. Even if the words weren't real, the students (e.g., monotype), the students still learned about how to construct meanings from morphemes in a fun kind of way. She then introduced the real words to them. That's another possible idea. Thanks for your posting.
I'm in a foreign language class right now, and my teacher would agree whole-heartedly with you. When teaching a foreign language (and Biology can be a foreign language), she emphasizes that we should teach the words in context. It fits perfectly with what you are saying and what we learned in class. There are so many better ways to teach vocabulary, it just takes a little more thought and effort from the teacher. I agree with what you said.
ReplyDeleteI totally agree!! I had so many history and science classes that we copied definitions from the glossary. I LEARNED VERY LITTLE! I loved having all of the different vocabulary lesson activities from class because it gave me so many ideas. I love your idea of charades. It would help all your visual learners and personalize it for them. I also like having a discussion and letting them make their own definitions and/or pictures of the vocabulary words. Like we mentioned in our final, it is so important for students to understand the terminology/language in our class for them to fully understand the materials.
ReplyDelete