Blog #8 - Say What?

Vocabulary knowledge is critical to successful reading. Therefore, if reading occurs in every classroom, vocabulary should be taught in every classroom as well. Adolescent Literacy: Turning Promise into Practice states that, “language is power, and those who can use language effectively have an advantage over those who can’t or don’t” (Beers, 2007, p. 102). As teachers, we can provide our students with this advantage by helping them to expand their vocabularies. Knowledge of vocabulary promotes a variety of things including comprehension, achievement, thinking, communication, and fluency (Hinchman, 2014, p. 121). Once again, we come back to this idea of variety in the classroom.

The types of variety students will come across when learning new vocabulary words ranges far and wide. It is not uncommon for a word to have several meanings, so students may be familiar with a word, but only in certain contexts (Beers, 2007, p. 93). In order for students to be exposed to new vocabulary words, they need to be exposed to a variety of reading materials. However, students must also have variety in how they learn these new vocabulary words; not all students have the same learning style (Hinchman, 2014, p. 120). In each of the texts I read in preparation for writing this, there was a strategy that stood out to me – one that I could see myself using in a high-school Spanish classroom.

From Adolescent Literacy: Turning Promise into Practice – Using a fill-in-the-blank paragraph (Beers, 2007, p. 93) could be very good to introduce new vocabulary if students were given a word bank that included both the English and Spanish words. As long as students knew the new vocabulary words in English, they could insert them correctly into the Spanish paragraph. This assessment could be repeated at the end of the unit, with only the Spanish words available to the students.

From Best Practices in Adolescent Literacy – Peer-training is a nice strategy to use in the classroom because it benefits both the teacher and the learner in the situation (Hinchman, 2014, p. 124). It also frees the teacher up to listen in on what’s going on in the classroom, grade papers, or prep for the next segment of the lesson. I like this strategy for a Spanish classroom because it allows students to practice their speaking abilities with their peers.

From “How Can Teachers Increase Classroom Use of Academic Vocabulary?” – While it may be difficult, I think It would be beneficial to do prefix/suffix maps with advanced classes (Larson, 2013, p. 16). Spanish and English have many similar prefixes and suffixes, so I think students would be able to come up with a substantial list if we did this.

While I was thinking about teaching vocabulary in a Spanish classroom and connecting that to the material I read, I was confused at first. Most of the vocabulary being taught in a foreign language classroom is not “academic” per say; the vocabulary being learned is vocabulary that is necessary to communicate, especially in low-level classes. Many of the examples in the books did not really apply to me, because the words my students are learning aren’t fancy or multisyllabic; they tend to be very basic. However, once students get to higher-level classes, these strategies become more useful.

References: 

Beers, K., Probst, R. E., & Rief, L. (2007). Adolescent Literacy: Turning Promise into Practice. Portsmouth, New Hampshire: Heinemann. 

Hinchman, K. A., & Sheridan-Thomas, H. (2014). Best Practices in Adolescent Literacy Instruction. New York, New York: The Guilford Press. 

Larson, L., Dixon, T., & Townsend, D. (2013). How can teachers increase classroom use of academic vocabulary? Voices from the Middle 20(4).