My students have an unfortunate hatred of 'big words'. For example, this morning, they expressed their loathing for such words as 'covalent' and 'polyatomic'. Of course, they also hate being explicitly taught vocabulary. Sometimes, dialogue in my class looks like this:
Students: You're using big words!
Me: Okay, let's learn some vocabulary
Students: Learning words is for babies!
Me: You said you didn't understand these words
Students: We should be learning Science!
Me: Okay, let's learn some Science
Students: We don't understand these big words!
Me: You said you wanted to learn Science
Of course, there is a lot more hand waving. Also stamping of feet and huffing. Possibly some shouting.
The thing is, I have tried teaching new vocabulary in a range of ways. I have tried making visual dictionaries that students add to each time we learn a new content word. I have literacy Do Now activities that involve definitions, example sentences, and cloze activities. I have tried keeping an online glossary on the class site (there was so much complaining about this one). I have tried posters. I have tried embedding vocabulary on purpose into learning. Students hate it, even though they know they need it.
Anyway, I am continuing with my literacy Do Nows, since five minutes of vocabulary seems a lot more palatable than a longer chunk. Here are some things I do, from very low level to quite high level:
Unscrambling letters to make words (visibility of words)
Matching related words and identifying what they have in common (topic-specific words)
Matching words to definitions
Matching halves of sentences that show vocabulary words in context
Cloze activities using vocabulary words
Differentiating between the Science meaning of a word and its common meaning
Creating a picture or diagram to illustrate a word
Anyway, now that I have reminded myself that I do actually do things that help literacy, I feel much better
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