Vocabulary Instruction

Hello all…I am on cloud nine this week because I officially have applied for student teaching this fall. It’s been a slow and steady race. I feel like I am the tortoise in the story of the tortoise and the hare…so many have surpassed me and have already graduated. But, it’s just right around the corner now. Yay! I can’t believe how close the finish line is for me. We all are going to be teachers soon! J

Last semester I had a fabulous teacher name Kami Dupree. During one broadcast class, we were asked to print a sheet of paper with different sized and dimensions of rectangles. We were asked to group them in whatever way we saw fit. Then we were asked to explain our reasoning for why we grouped them that way. Eventually, through class discussion we formulated a definition for the math term of similar without knowing that this was what she was trying to teach us. We gave our ideas, she wrote them on the board, and eventually came up with the definition. I loved how she did this. Not only did the lesson catch my interest and kept my attention, but it helped me to understand and know the term of similarity at a deeper level.

I definitely agree from the reading of Harmon, Wood, and Hedrick that mathematics text can often have different meanings in math than in everyday life. It’s important to teach our students the meaning in mathematics since they most likely won’t hear these words with the appropriate meaning (for math) outside of school. Our students will be able to learn a concept so much more when they understand the words and what they mean for math. As we help them to understand the wording, our students will build upon knowledge from the past and gain a much deeper understanding. I find it interesting that they mention that content area instruction in word-learning strategies is especially important for those students falling behind. I guess if you think about it though…if you didn’t understand or know a language well, it would be very difficult to understand and you would fall behind. I would replicate my previous teacher practice for sure…she did an amazing job. I will also add in more of the techniques that we have learned this week. I can see how extremely important teaching text really is. I never realized this until now.