I know that we don't concentrate on spelling at the middle level as much as in elementary, but I thought I would share how my 9 year old's teacher does their spelling. At the beginning of the year, the students take a pre-test on all of the words that they need to know by the end of the year. Then the students only test on the words that they missed on the pretest each week. When they finish their words for the year, then they get to pick their spelling words. For example, my daughter is choosing Greek vocabulary words and books of the Bible. She LOVES it!
So...for those of you who use key vocabulary terms, is this something you can incorporate? I don't know how it is done...so I am just throwing it out there.
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Great idea . although I do not think we have a predetermined list of words students must know by the end of the year, rather their comprehension of prefixes, roots and sufixes and the change in meanings is emphasized, so we need a lot of context.
ReplyDeleteCan you create a list from previous years? Once you have compiled the list of the prefixes, roots and suffixes can you pretest them using this method? I don't know -- What do you think?
ReplyDeleteOne skill we really need to teach our kids is to create their own list. They need to learn that when they come across a strange word to write it down and look it up instead of just pass over it (thats what most of us do) Thiis is an important tool to college prep. Basically we're just to lazy to stop and look it up, but it is so easy today with desktop dictionaries. We need to teach and reinforce this skill from a very early age. We need to teach the kids to study words THEY don't know not a set of words we determine. I know I don't do it enough
ReplyDeleteTed: That is a fabulous idea and could be so easily accomplished with one to one computing!
ReplyDeleteThis has always been one of my pet peeves. Students are required to take an AIMS assessment every year, but there is no way to determine what key words the test will use. We can teach the students 300 to 400 new words a year, but if these words are not used in concert with the AIMS, students will still score poorly.
ReplyDeleteIf you look at the detailed break down on the reading portion of the AIMS, one area where student consistently do poorly is vocabulary. This is a direct reflection of this problem.
I do not think we stop teaching them vocabulary and I love Ted's idea of having students create their own wordlists; but I think teaching decoding skills in concert with the use of context clues is something we need to re-enforce. Often students know what a word means when they hear it said outloud. The problem is they do not sound the word out correctly in their head and then loose the meaning.
I think it takes a combination of instructional strategies.
I had no idea about the vocabulary on AIMS. I would think that just like they have AIMS prep packets for math, they should have one for vocabulary?? It seems like we should have something from the state. As this is not my area of expertise, I don't know...anyone else have any ideas?
ReplyDeletelogical idea..but with so many words at these grades, the practical list would be overwhelming. I will never forget when my son brought home the affix list from Zumbro years ago. I NEARLY DIED!
ReplyDeleteI now also have such a list but will never expose them all at once especially out of context. There is also other stats which show when similar spelled words are taught together, the child may never learn to differentiate - that is why we see them messing up "their" with "there". A teacher taught those two together some grand and sunny day back at elementary school.
Hee Hee! I think that you have extremely valid points Wanda. I think that Cindy Chovich taught a class years ago saying that similar spelling words should never be taught at the same time. I think that most kids do learn by differences rather than similarities.
ReplyDeleteAnd yet . . . core curriculum at the elementary level when teaching spelling is identifying word families (fat, cat, rat).
ReplyDeleteMichael Clay Thompson is my new guru when it comes to grammar and spelling. He no longer teaches vocabulary words, but concentrates on affixes, prefixes, and suffixes. He has demonstrated that if you teach a student 100 root words they will expand their vocabulary understanding by 10 fold. Here is his website:
http://www.rfwp.com/mct.php
I just heard something about this recently and can't recall where...the problem with so much online surfing. But I think you are right Kristi, we need to change how we teach vocabulary. I think when we learn similar terms we get confused. I still get effect and affect mixed up. I can remember learning them at the same time in 7th grade and everyone was so confused....I'm still living with the effects of it....or would it be affects? :)
ReplyDeleteI value context clues instruction and practice to enable students to problem-solve the meanings of unknown words and to increase their vocabularies. However, over-reliance on context clues for word attack (pronunciation) can hamstring developmental readers. This being said, by way of introduction, here is a great Pictionary® game (http://penningtonpublishing.com/blog/reading/context-clues-categories/) that reinforces practice in applying the five main context clue strategies and while refining and reviewing vocabulary. Great review for upcoming vocabulary tests! Want more free vocabulary review games? But wait; there's still more.
ReplyDelete