Week 7 Assignment 3: Teaching Word Study


Word usage is divided into three levels:
Tier 1 words are the basic words that get used in everyday reading and conversations. Being that these words are those that everyone is familiar with, they don’t have to be taught explicitly.
Tier 2 words are new words that students will come across in text, conversations and TV shows. We want students to know the definitions and proper usage of these words. Examples of these words are ‘freeway’, ‘democracy’, ‘hurricane’. This category of words is the one that is important to focus on during reading and writing instruction. The lesson doesn’t necessarily have to be an add-on vocabulary lesson; it can be incorporated in what they’re learning by finding age-level Tier 2 words in the children’s learning material.
Tier 3 words are the highly technical words that are usually unique to a specific topic or subject. It is not necessary to focus on these words, rather teach them when it pertains to the subject matter being taught.
When students come across an unfamiliar word, teaching them the ‘chunking’ strategy, can help them figure out the word independently. They begin by actually tearing apart the word. Once they can pronounce the middle segment, they try the same with the beginning and ending. When they can decode each part separately, they reconnect the chunks and read it as one long word. After some time, this activity becomes ‘too messy’ to do each time, so instead of tearing, they use their thumbs to cover up parts of the word. After a few days of constant practice of this exercise, they no longer have to use their thumbs because they already have the strategy down-pat.
The best time to focus on teaching tier 2 words is when these words appear in the children’s learning material. If the teacher is aware that the students are unfamiliar with the word, it is a perfect opportunity to foster word study. Students can look to find if there is any part of the word that they do know, and then use that to help them arrive at a proper definition. Another strategy they can use is looking at the words before and after and use context clues to understand the word. If a student asks for a definition of a word, instead of telling it to the child, try having the child figure this out on his/her own using strategies learnt in the classroom. Eventually, students will be able to this on their own, without the assistance of their teachers.


Comments

  1. Chava LowenthalMarch 11, 2018 at 1:14 AM

    Yes, a teacher should not just tell the students a definition, without first letting them think about it!!

    ReplyDelete
  2. ChayaMarch 12, 2018 at 12:48 PM

    Gitty, I enjoyed reading your reflections on word study. using context clues and asking students to try and think about word definitions are great ways to teach vocabulary. Thanks for sharing!

    ReplyDelete

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