Week 4
This week we had class differently, but I learned more about vocabulary and language in general.
From chapters 4 and 5, the stages of spelling was explained. I had previously touched a little bit about the stages in another education class, but I am glad to be reminded of the four stages: Precommunicative, prephonetic, phonetic, transitional, and conventional. I think in my experiences I have seen each stage from working at a daycare to working with elementary students. When I was younger, my mother kept several of my writings and school projects and I remember looking through them and seeing my spelling improve throughout the years. Does anyone still have any of their childhood writings still?
During my student teaching experience, I noticed that vocabulary was taught differently than when I was in school. I remember having to write my words out a certain about of times and looking up the definitions in a dictionary. Now, many schools used word study, which is something I really enjoyed teaching. Students were given 16 words to study and worth with for 2 weeks. They did activities with the words, and completed a packet with several exercises. At the end of the second week, the students had a spelling test and almost every single student spelled each word correct.
As far as writing, I worked with students who were below average and had difficulties writing. To me, this was the hardest thing to teach. I introduced to them the writing process of writing drafts and editing before their final draft. For writing, I think it is important to have one to one conference where the teacher goes through the student's strengths and weaknesses. What do you think is the best way to teach writing effectively?
Lastly, from the recordings, language development was further explained from the start of babbling. One thing that was interesting to me was ebonics. It is important as teacher to be familiar to the different ebonics students use because as mention, African Americans or Latinos may have different ebonics than Caucasian students.
From chapters 4 and 5, the stages of spelling was explained. I had previously touched a little bit about the stages in another education class, but I am glad to be reminded of the four stages: Precommunicative, prephonetic, phonetic, transitional, and conventional. I think in my experiences I have seen each stage from working at a daycare to working with elementary students. When I was younger, my mother kept several of my writings and school projects and I remember looking through them and seeing my spelling improve throughout the years. Does anyone still have any of their childhood writings still?
During my student teaching experience, I noticed that vocabulary was taught differently than when I was in school. I remember having to write my words out a certain about of times and looking up the definitions in a dictionary. Now, many schools used word study, which is something I really enjoyed teaching. Students were given 16 words to study and worth with for 2 weeks. They did activities with the words, and completed a packet with several exercises. At the end of the second week, the students had a spelling test and almost every single student spelled each word correct.
As far as writing, I worked with students who were below average and had difficulties writing. To me, this was the hardest thing to teach. I introduced to them the writing process of writing drafts and editing before their final draft. For writing, I think it is important to have one to one conference where the teacher goes through the student's strengths and weaknesses. What do you think is the best way to teach writing effectively?
Lastly, from the recordings, language development was further explained from the start of babbling. One thing that was interesting to me was ebonics. It is important as teacher to be familiar to the different ebonics students use because as mention, African Americans or Latinos may have different ebonics than Caucasian students.
For me, the first thing that comes to mind about the best way to teach writing effectively is to practice, practice, practice. Do more fun activities that have them write. Have them write about something they love or are interested in. Start a journal and have them write in it weekly and about anything they want. I feel the more they write the better they will get and they will build up that confidence to want to write more. Just like in reading. You have to practice a lot and build up that confidence so they want to read more.
ReplyDeleteI am not familiar with word study but I think this is a great way for students to learn their vocabulary words. Even when my children went to school we did the write and look up way. The word study way seems like it would be more in depth and give them ample time to practice writing the words and using them in context giving them a better chance for retaining the information.
ReplyDeleteI do still have many of my works from childhood and I enjoy looking at them and comparing them with my children's work to see how much faster we are teaching skills to students now days versus then. It is amazing at what a student learns now compared to then.
My mom has kept a lot of my writing and work from when I was grade school, it is cool to look back at it and see the difference in how it is taught now. At the school I use to work at they would get spelling words each week and do games and worksheets with those words then have a test each week, similar to what you taught. I love watching child learn to write. We also used the idea of the students cutting out words and making a sentence then writing the sentence, this helped them with their writing skills.
ReplyDeleteMy mom also kept some of my written work from early elementary school. It's so fun to look at. I especially love when kids first learn to spell their name and some letters are so much bigger than others. Some may even be backwards! It's so crazy to think how far a student's writing develops in just a few short years. I think when I was a kid I learned vocabulary words in more of a Word Study way like you talked about. I don't remember ever looking words up in a dictionary. We had a list of words and we used them in writing prompts and work sheets. Then we had a spelling test. By the time we had the test though we had worked with them so much that it was pretty easy! Seems like a much better way than just looking a word up in the dictionary.
ReplyDeleteI kept my daughter's first attempts at writing, too! Especially the early writing.
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