Chapter 7: Vocabulary PAR

Having a robust vocabulary is very important in any subject. Vocabulary is a large portion of SAT testing that high school students take to get accepted into their dream schools. Knowing how to find the definitions of words and retaining that information is important. Teachers can help students do this across the entire PAR framework. Using some of the tools presented in the previous chapters can be deemed useful, most notably graphic organizers and concept maps. There are other tools that teachers can use to make sure their students are keeping hold of the information that they are being presented in the aspect of vocabulary.

For the sake of not rambling on about all of the activities presented within Chapter 7 of our text, I will go through my most favorite ones that the book presents for each section of PAR. As far as preparation goes, I like the idea of taking an inventory to see what the students already are familiar with. Using this as a preparation activity also gets their minds set on the task at hand and hints to them that they should be looking out for the terms that they are unfamiliar with. Teachers can help students dissect the vocabulary they are reading by helping them with word roots. One of the classes in high school I found most beneficial for vocabulary was etymology. The semester was centered on learning word roots and determining the meaning of words that we had never seen before

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Lastly, I would like to focus more on the reflection step as it has one of my favorite activities. Students can use illustrations to make sure they fully understand the concept behind a term. When taking English in 10^th grade, I remember my teacher preparing us for the vocabulary portion of the SAT every class. She presented us with a set of terms at the beginning of the week. The rest of the week she would start off by having us recall the terms by showing us cartoon illustrations. Later in the week, we had to come up with our own sentences and illustrations relating to the terms. I feel like using vocabulary illustrations in this way was more than just reflection. She was really using them across the whole PAR framework over the course of the entire week.

I have never been a huge fan of vocabulary, I would say that is probably one of my biggest areas I have to focus on when I read. I mentioned an example in the previous paragraph about an experience from my tenth grade English class. Let’s jump ahead to my junior year English class. At this point in my life, I was becoming interested in journalism and was a part of the newspaper staff which had a whole class associated with it. I expressed to my 11^th grade English teacher that I wanted to become more proficient in vocabulary and he introduced me to a really neat tool. There was a book he leant me called “Tooth and Nail: A Novel Approach to the SAT.” I felt this book was a really neat tool because I really liked to read and it introduced vocabulary throughout a novel that was written as a mystery. It was not until sophomore and junior year of high school that I really began to understand how to use vocabulary tools most efficiently, but it has made me a better reader since.

Reflection within PAR

This week, we will complete our discussion on the PAR framework by talking about the reflection, or final, portion. Reflecting upon material allows for better retention and can encourage further learning on a topic. One of the main goals of the reflection phase is to allow for students to become autonomous learners, meaning that they become self-regulated. Once students begin to become autonomous learners, they are better at monitoring their level of comprehension throughout the readings and can alter their reading style to compensate if necessary. The reflection phase also allows for students to focus on communication, critical thinking, and critical literacy.

Often times, reflection can occur within groups. A common misconception lies between simple group work versus cooperative learning. While doing typical group work, the student works with others to complete a set of goals dictated by their teacher. Working in a cooperative learning holds students responsible for their own work but also responsible for making sure everyone in the group is getting the material. The effectiveness of cooperative learning lies in several different strategies: rehearsal, elaboration, organization, comprehension, and affective strategies.  These different stages can be achieved through several different activities discussed within the chapter.

Think-pair-share is a strategy that works as a rehearsal step. Students work individually with thought provoking questions then work with a partner to discuss their answers to these and maybe more questions in depth. As a group, the class then gets together to discuss what has been learned. Students are allowed to elaborate through activities such as paired reading and three-step interviews where they talk about a specific section of reading with a designated to help others learn about it. Graphic organizers are a great way to keep what has been read organized. Comprehension can be monitored through activities like rally table and numbered heads together. Rally table gives students an open-ended question and a paper is passed between the students giving everyone an opportunity to put an answer down for the question. In numbered heads together, students are given a number and asked a question. The students are placed into groups based on their numbers and the teacher will then call out a random number and call on a student given that number to answer the question. Lastly, some affective strategies include paired readings and discussion groups.

This chapter presented us with several different activities to use within the classroom to help students reflect on material that has been learned in the lesson. By following the full PAR framework, students should be able to grasp just about any information that has been presented to them. Visit the link below for another popular reflection strategy that was not discussed within the textbook.

https://www.teachingchannel.org/videos/student-goal-setting

Assistance in Learning

Preparation, assistance, and reflection. These are the three steps to the PAR framework that is a common lesson strategy to follow. While in past posts, I have discusses preparation steps within this framework, today I will be focusing mainly on the assistance aspect of it. Reading is a typical routine that occurs in classrooms across the curricula. Whether you are teaching a math class, a science class, or an elementary class, I am sure that you expect your students to read the text that you assign. To some, this process may be burdensome so it is your job as the teacher to facilitate learning and help them overcome this barrier.

Several techniques exist to encourage students to read more actively and comprehend the material that is put before them. As a refresher, the preparation step exists to help the students recall information that they have learned previously that relates to the topic at hand. The assistance step exists to aid the student in understanding the material. Presenting questions with the reading is a good step to take but there are other more effective methods to consider. Having the students create a concept map while they read will help them organize their thoughts while being able to continue to make further connections after the reading is finished. Another good organization tip is to have the students create a chart to organize the information.

In fear of becoming repetitive, questioning students may not be the best way to get them to understand the information; however, using proper formatting when presenting the questions can be essential to fixing this issue. If the questions are presented in such a manner that they follow the text, then the material might be easier for the students to discover. A technique that I learned about in this reading that I felt was interesting and helpful was the Directed Reading-Thinking Activity (DR-TA). This method allows the students to predict what the upcoming text will say based on what they previously read and compare it later on to what they actually read. Students can use DR-TA for both fiction and non-fiction readings and study the different parts of the text (ie. Pictures, figures, graphs, titles, etc.). The last activity I would like to bring up were the study guides that do exactly what their title suggests. They guide the reader to finding the information in an orderly fashion.

This reading has helped me get a better grasp of how teachers can engage their students while reading and assist them through the “suffering” that some may feel. How do you feel these techniques can help your field of teaching?

Influential Quote for Me

School binders

Trying to save some money for the future, I have decided to not only go with erasable tabs for my binders, but I also have written on them with Sharpie. No worries though, next semester it'll just take a quick wipe with some alcohol and it'll come right off and be ready for my up coming classes allowing me to consolidate all my old coursework in one collaborative binder later on.

They are also propped up on my desk for easy access and different colors were used to distinguish the classes.

Keeping Students Involved

Richardson, J.S., Morgan, R. F., & Fleener, C. E.. (2012) Reading to Learn in the Content Areas. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

                Assigned this week were the second and third chapters of our textbook (cited above). Chapter two focuses on teaching in the affective domain. This means that teachers should be paying attention to what interests their students and how the readings make their student feel. Finding works that are directly applicable to the students make the material easier to remember. I am the same way, if I find something that I am interested in reading, I am more likely to follow along with the story line and even do my own research about whatever it is I am reading. How many books do you remember that you were forced to read in high school? How many books do you remember that were read casually, for fun? If you ask me, it is much easier to recall the lines from Harry Potter or the Hunger Games than Romeo and Juliet.

Another good strategy for teachers to follow is to keep a positive classroom environment. Students are more likely to succeed in the task at hand if they do not feel as though they are being pressured into doing it. Positive classroom environments also promote an internal locus of control where the students feel more like they are in control of what they are doing versus an external locus of control where outside factors come more into play. Using the GATOR (gaining acceptance toward reading) system can also create an internal locus of control by involving the students by asking them how a certain part of the reading makes them for or why they think it is important.

Chapter three looks at preparing to learn and puts a main focus on prior knowledge in reading. While many students may not think they remember about the role a tree plays in an ecosystem, a quick preparation activity might jog their memory. Getting the student into the right mindset to learn a specific topic is almost always necessary to get their full attention and participation. Using activities such as KWL, Think-pair-share, or even a set of analogies, students can redirect their attention to the new material with which they are about to learn by activating previous knowledge within their minds.

What are some ways that you know to keep your students involved in class?