Even though the world is becoming more visual based and less communication face to face based it is still super important to be able to communicate and understand what people are saying. There is a growing need to improve students vocabulary. More and more students are struggling with vocabulary and the level that they need to be at is something that many of them find unachievable. Even if they are able to understand certain words or vocabulary there are different levels of knowing it. Also every student is different so some may know more than others. One of the hardest aspects of teaching is trying to teach many students that are all on different levels.
Vocabulary is something that we all know is very important and also somewhat antiquated. For something that is so important you would think that we would have evolved a more modern to teach it to children. In the Dalton article they talk about using eVoc which is technology based system that allows teachers to develop vocabulary for students. It is important to include technology in the classroom because it is something that is in most every aspect of life nowadays. The article offers many different ways to incorporate technology into vocabulary lessons. With these several of these lessons, computers for every student is not required, which we know is something that rarely happens in a classroom. These strategies also include several aspects such as including ways to connect to all types of learners. One of the activities is a word cloud. It includes words that go along with the vocabulary word and you are able to determine how the words go with the main word. It is important to not just do the same old vocabulary lessons. By including different activities the students will be able to remember the words better and enjoy learning vocabulary.
Example of a Word Cloud:
As teachers the students are going to model what we do. It is important to know that and remember that. If we use their vocabulary words then it will help them remember them and use them. One example the Lane article gave was during morning meeting. My using vocab words to describe the weather they will also use them. By using words like "rather brisk" or partly cloudy rather than words like clouds or cold they can expand their vocabulary by repetition and seeing you use them to describe the weather.
Questions:
Do you think that incorporating technology in vocabulary lessons is important for this generation of students?
How do yo think that technology can be sued in the classroom?
I enjoyed reading about the word cloud ideas. You could teach about anything that way, I like the idea of having a outline of the United States and then filling it up with words that describe America for a history lesson and vocabulary building.
ReplyDelete