RPI: Day 6 Vocabulary (and Decoding)

  My personal comments are written in italics and embedded in this blog post.

Connecting with Manaiakalani

All aspects of our lives are improved by having a robust vocabulary in every language we speak. Vocabulary is grown indirectly as a young person through experience and noticing the world around them. It is then directly reinforced through the conversations in the home (or with others) that allow children to interact as a participant in the conversation. 

Looking at different ways to make vocabulary acquisition occur, while being more fun has been something that I have inquired into in the past. I have learnt a lot along the way from Dr Jannie van Hees and discussions with Anne Sinclair. I am always looking for new ways to teach this, especially when connecting with students working across such a wide range of literacy levels. 

Background to Vocabulary Instruction

How do we improve or work through how to pronounce words? We do a lot of work in semantics/meaning and spelling practice. The lexicon is the body of words that we have in our knowledge that we can use in different ways (orally, written, read). 

Although there are many students who will inherently pick up the concepts there are many more who need that direct repetitive instruction and practise. This is especially true with our students who are English as a second language learners.

Word Consciousness

Being able to talk the language of the specialty.  Being mindful of talking/writing in a formal language.

How can we incorporate a word work activity into our weekly tasks that focuses on cline words? How can we add some fun into our vocabulary development? (ie puns, rebus puzzles, homophones, ect). I have also gotten away from adding a word wall in my classroom due to space in the past or putting up words for our Inquiry. However, I have lots of wall space this year, so I would like to transform one of those spaces into a living word wall. 

Explicit and Robust Vocabulary Instruction

1: Direct explanation (in a learner friendly way)

2: Thought provoking connections to meanings in students’ lived experiences

3: Playful use of words (e.g. word consciousness)

4: Interactive engagement

5: Follow up (multiple encounters) 

We need to be careful not to raise the lexicon bar too much. If we need to, what can we do (shared/buddy reading ect) to ensure that the onramp for learning is accessible. 

Cracking Unfamiliar Words

During Level 1, learners were using letters and sounds to work out by decoding the word. Younger students learn how to “chunk” and “blend” sounds to make up a new word (phonemic awareness). 

This is something that I have been doing very well with my students who are reading below grade level and then connecting back to it for those reading at year 4 and above.

Morphology

Reflect and Plan:

When planning for my reading groups, I use our PES Progressions spreadsheet to determine what I need to be covering for each individual reading group. This, along with our PES Levelled Reading Learning Goals, are what I use when planning for my groups. I teach this directly to my students during our guided reading sessions using the words in the texts we are reading to guide our discussions. Students then have an opportunity to practise that morpheme when completing their independent task. Students also have the opportunity to encounter these morphemes when on Reading Eggs and I have just discovered earlier this week how to assign individualised tasks to students and groups on Reading Eggs. I am excited to bring this into my classroom routine in Term 3. 

I would like to put some activities/UDL (hands on) based activities for students to work in in small groups over the holidays so we can put in some good effort in term 3.