Having Fun With Vocabulary With Your Child

I have had a vocabulary incentive in my room for years, and it's amazing how motivated the students are to use it. It has various ins and outs, but basically, if my students see one of our vocabulary words in print -- or they can get their parents or teacher to slip in some of the words into their conversation and the student identifies it -- they earn points from me. What is so interesting is that every time I do this activity, the students are very eager to find the words, to have their points recorded, yet never ask me what they will "earn" for those points. For example, this year some students have already earned 50 points, yet no one has asked me what they will receive as their prize. Not one. We all just enjoy using and playing with the words, that's all. I just read an article about a high school teacher who gives students stickers on a chart each time they use a vocabulary word in their writing. Stickers -- for high schoolers? Parents, that's all it takes -- some fun, some challenge -- and our children are eager to learn.

Assessing Students' Oral Responses

I caught an interesting article on Education Week Teacher, a teacher wondering if and how teachers can assess oral contributions made by her students. Her musings began as she wondered why her own daughter who apparently offered strong insight into classroom discussions did not earn points for doing so. Is there a way to form a rubric for such students?

When my son participated in Odyssey of the Mind, one activity was for students to sit around in a circle, passing around an object. When the object reached each student, she was to verbally turn the object into something else. A shoe, as it landed into different hands, became a boat, a hat, cockpit, a corset. If the student made her object somehow tie to the object just before hers, she received an extra point. A boat became a paddle, a corset became a straight jacket.

Discussions in class could have a similar, yet dissimilar, rubric. Just as some rubrics for essays reward points when the writer hits upon certain, key, topics covered in class, general discussion rubrics could award points for tying in key topic in class, connecting to the speaker just before her, even the use of complex sentences.

It would take some doing. But in a world where the spoken word is just as valuable as the written word -- and, in some cases, far more valuable -- such a rubric seems to have found its time.

     Here is an informative article on how to motivate students to write. However, I've found the best way a teacher can engage students in writing is -- is to be a writer himself. When I show my students some of my work, when I then ask them to create their own and we will work on it together to polish their work -- I find the most motivated students.
     Teachers who are writers also far better understand exactly what they are teaching. How often I've heard students come to me from their regular classrooms, giving me the classic definition of "metaphor." Their own teachers did their best, I'm sure, when they armed their students with a definition to explain this wonderful writing tool. But did they tell their students how metaphors liven up writing, how they allows the reader to see an image in the environment they themselves live in, how the ordinary sentence become extraordinary in the hands of a metaphor? A writer would tell students this -- and more.

Teachers and Technology

   

 those of us who know technology in the classroom is the way to go -- but have much to learn ourselves -- here's an excellent article on just that topic. Perhaps the next generation of teachers will simply enter the classroom and do it all. For the rest of us, these articles help guide us.

Reading Nonfiction Gives Major Boost In Reading Development

     I cheered when I saw this New York Times article, a study that seemed to show -- at least, for a first examination -- that helping children read nonfiction has a far lasting impact on their reading achievement. I've suspected this for some time. Quality literature is a must for a literate society, and it opens the reader to other lifestyles, other personalities, other human desires and thoughts. But too much of the reading textbooks are filled today with mediocre fiction. Why waste the children's time, this study suggests, when instead they could be adding to their prior knowledge through nonfiction?
    It will be interesting to find out if this is some statistical error or, in fact, nonfiction reading has much more to offer our students than once thought.

Story Pirates and Writing

     In New Jersey a group of very talented improvisation actors inspire school children to write their own plays, encourage students to submit their own plays to their troupe, and they return later in the year to put on some of those very plays. Definitely, most definitely, this will inspire students to see a purpose for their writing, a direction for themselves. Surely many towns have such actors who can do the same. Though I love when various groups visit our school -- or our students visit the children's theater here -- how valuable would such an activity be in our own schools. The actors get a paycheck, the teachers get direction and inspiration for their writing, and the children -- the children write and write and write.
     What a delightful idea all around.

Charting Who Will Fail, Who Will Not - And Acting On It

The Charlotte-Mecklenburg school district in North Carolina is tracking how their students are doing, looking for early signs that may lead to school failure. They have a "risk-factor scorecard,"and as they see signs that hint at later failure, the school moves in. Monitoring begins in elementary school. Very proactive, a wonderful idea. Most schools I've worked in have child study teams of some sort, but if I read this correctly, this district doesn't wait until the child is heading toward special education but rather just a child who needs monitoring, extra observing, a cautious eye. Great idea.