Reflection #8

Bromley: Nine things every teacher should know about words and vocabulary instruction

I believe Bromley chose to write this chapter because he wanted to inform teachers that teaching vocabulary well is a key aspect of developing engaged and successful readers. "This article discusses nine things teachers may have forgotten (or have never known) but need to remember about words and word learning to be effective teachers of vocabulary and their content area."  The following are the nine aspects Bromley believes teachers should always remember: English is a huge and unique collection of words, the rules of English are simple and consistent compared to other languages, language proficiency grows from oral competence to written competence, words are learned because of associations that connect the new with the known, seventy percent of the most frequently use words have multiple meanings, meanings of 60% of multisyllabic words can be inferred by analyzing word parts, direct instruction in vocabulary influences comprehension more than any other factor, teaching fewer words well is more effective than teaching several words in a cursory way, and effective teachers display an attitude of excitement and interest in words and language. This chapter brought a lot to my attention regarding words and word learning, as well as what techniques are most beneficial for my students.  "Overuse of dictionary hunting, definition writing, or teacher explanation can turn students off learning new words and does not necessarily result in better comprehension or learning."  As teachers, we have to give a variety of options to our students for learning because we can't expect that they will all understand the words and material by using the same techniques.

"When students store new information by linking it to their existing schema, or network of organized information, there is a better chance the new word will be remembered later." This definitely applies to my content area because mathematics is a subject of building blocks.  Concepts and ideas are always building from each other and if students can recognize these relationships they will definitely have a better understanding of the material. As I math teacher, I definitely believe that we need to engage students' prior knowledge and related experiences before teaching the new material.  If students already know something and can relate the new content to previous ideas they will understand it at a whole other level.  I also loved the idea of creating three-dimensional words because being able to associate a word with something meaningful is always helpful for the students.  Three-dimensional words include a definition, sentence, drawing, and real object to represent the word.  By doing this students are able to put an image to the word and in mathematics this is crucial for complete understanding!