As a new teacher, what do I need to know about vocabulary instruction?

 1) Vocabulary is vital for comprehension. Due to this close association between the two, vocabulary instruction must take place during and throughout the reading process to ensure students comprehend the text. This also helps to build a stronger vocabulary.

2) Using the active-learning approach while teaching vocabulary helps students to stay engaged and to better understand the vocabulary at hand. One way to use student-centered instruction is to have students compare and contrast words by sorting into categories.

3) Teaching vocabulary in word families, rather than teaching single words is an effective instructional approach. Using word study allows students to reveal consistencies and patterns within groups of words.

4) It is important to help students to understand that some words (homophones) have multiple meanings. Using context clues is an effective way to determine the meaning of the homophone in a text.

5) The generative approach is an important concept that promotes teaching students that although complex texts will have words they do not know, their generative word knowledge can help them understand the meaning of new words.

Teaching Phonemic Awareness to Older Students

It is often assumed by middle and high school teachers that their students will enter their classroom with the fundamental skills of phonemic awareness. In reality, some students struggle with reading due to the lacking of these fundamental skills. It is vital that teachers take charge and provide explicit and systematic instruction that will fill the gaps that students have in phonemic awareness entering their classroom. 

Phonemic awareness is the ability to identify and manipulate individual sounds in spoken words. This is a very important skill for all readers. In addition to the simple sources of instruction that is used in early elementary school, teachers can find other sources to make the support more meaningful for older students. The use of Hip-Hop music can be engaging for students and also help the teacher to better teach these concepts. Using rhyme and alliteration within Hip-Hop music can teach students to discriminate and manipulate phonemes. A follow-up activity may include students actually writing their own song or verse using rhyme or alliteration. It is necessary for teachers to preview specific Hip-Hop songs to assure it can be helpful for the specific skill being taught and is school-appropriate/not offensive. 

The additional support provided in an intervention for students lacking in phonemic awareness skills is very important for any student, regardless of age. It is very likely that if a student is lacking these fundamental skills, that the student is a struggling reader. In other cases, a student that is lacking the skills but is not a struggling reader would still benefit from this additional support in the long run. 

Phonemic Awareness Checklist

 

Phonemic Awareness Checklist
Sounds and Word Discrimination
Identifies that words and sounds are different
Identifies which word is different
Identifies different speech sounds
Rhyming
Identifies whether two words rhyme
Produces a word that rhymes
Sound Isolation
Identifies initial sound in 1-syllable words
Identifies final sound in 1-syllable words
Identifies middle sound in 1-syllable words
Blending
Orally blends syllables or onset-rimes
Oral blends separate phonemes
Blends 3-4 phonemes into a whole word
Segmentation
Claps words in sentences
Claps syllables in words
Says syllables
Segments individual sounds in words
Segments 3- and 4- phoneme, 1 syllable words

Teaching Phonemic Awareness

This video is a short explanation about the use of a blending board to teach phonemic awareness. The blending board is a fun way for students to “mix up” animal parts to make their own animal board to work with. In addition, the teacher uses little animal pieces or solid circles to segment and blend sounds of words. I liked the technique of segmenting the word visually using manipulatives. My only concern is that the students may get distracted with both the animal blending board and the animal manipulatives. I can see how this can be engaging for some, but I also imagine that other students may not be able to focus on the purpose of the activity, which is phonemic awareness. 

 

This video shows a very simple, yet effective way to teach onset-rime blending. The teacher brings in a puppet and explains that the puppet can only speak in a certain way (with a separation of onset-rime). The students were quickly able to identify that the puppet says words with the first sound of the word first, and then the rest of the word after. I really like the idea of bringing an outside manipulative in to teach students how to separate the onset and rime. I found it engaging for the students and also helpful to remember how to segment onset and rime.

 

This video displays a creative and engaging lesson teaching phoneme substitution. The teacher uses a book called “Diary of a Worm”, where the main character, a worm, ate the first sound of every word on his homework. It was the students’ job to figure out what sound was “eaten” off the words. When doing this, the teacher introduced other sounds that could also fit as the beginning sound of the words. The teacher used the “thumbs up or thumbs sideways” to allow students to confirm or question each student’s decision if the sounds make sense. Overall, I thought this was a really interesting and effective approach to teaching the very beginning of phoneme substitution to students.

Phonics Poster

Phonics and Comprehension Video

              This video displays an amazing example of both a phonics review and a reading comprehension lesson in a second grade class. From the start, I loved the teacher’s approach to teaching. During the phonics review, the teacher reviews how different letters sound together. She does an amazing job explaining nouns and proper nouns with examples. Having a quick review like this, even for second graders, could really be beneficial for all students, but especially those students who have not yet mastered these difficult concepts.

              During the comprehension lesson, the students were engaged at all times. The teacher has the students make a prediction and talk about the genre of their story during partner sharing. They come back together and then discussed each topic before moving onto the next. The teacher calls on individual students to share their ideas. While reading as a group, the teacher asks the students how the characters feel and expects students to answer in complete sentences while doing so. The teacher follows a flow chart model on the whiteboard and works with the students to complete it as they are reading the story. This works as a great visual for all students to refer to throughout the lesson.

             Throughout the entire video, the teacher uses whole brain teaching techniques, including attention grabbers and partner sharing. I especially appreciate how the teacher gets the class back to a whole group conversation with quick queues and attention grabbers. As teachers, we know that when students actively participate in conversation or reflection of a story and discuss their ideas, they are more likely to retain information about the story. This also helps them to make more connections. As a whole, this video gave me awesome ideas to keep students engaged, while also teaching them valuable lessons to foster reading development.

Lego and Gender

The Lego mashup was a clear example of the how specific toys can be gender segregated and advertised to appeal to a specific gender. After doing the mashup, I found myself watching different videos about Lego and their attempt to appeal to both boys and girls, but in very different ways.

The "boy" Lego sets included trucks, dragons, police, boats, Star Wars, and many more. All the sets had red, blue, green, black, yellow, and orange color Lego containers, blocks, and people. The colors pink and purple were nowhere to be found in these Lego sets.

On the other hand, the Legos "for girls" were called Lego Friends. These Lego sets had very different themes, including baking, hair salons, pets, beach, and horseback riding. The colors were almost all pink and purple, with a few other pastel colors. The makers of Lego even changed the girl "people" to look more like a mini doll or barbie with curves and skirts.

I found this research on Legos and gender to be very disappointing. It seems as though they are fostering social constructs that are not only stereotypical, but also limiting the world that women live in. As seen in one of the videos I watched, if there is an emergency in "Lego Land", only the boys can respond, and if the Lego people are hungry, that is the girls' job. Toys like Lego are forming these gender walls very early on for children. I believe this is a key reason why our society is so divided and focused on gender.
 
As a teacher, I found this video very interesting and eye-opening.
Gender Bias in Education Video