Teaching Secondary Reading

A Resource for Improving Academic Literacy with Adolescents ©2015

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Students personalize word learning...

 

One way to help students personalize word learning is to have them act out their vocabulary words. You can either assign pairs of students to act out specific words, like in this student-made example, or this one, or you can split the class into 2 teams and play one team against the other, charades style.

 

This is an effective strategy both for introducing new words and for reviewing them.

Mnemonic strategies are tricks to help students memorize words. A mnemonic is a linguistic device, often a rhyme, acronym, or anecdote, that aids recall. Research suggests that the sillier or more absurd they are, the more effective they are.

 

You may be familiar with a favorite from Biology to remember the order of taxonomic classifications: Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species = King Philip, come on for gosh sakes!

 

Once students get what mnemonics are, having them create their own mnemonics is the most powerful approach because it is the most personal.

 

Students can maintain a Personal Dictionary throughout the school year, adding pages as needed. Here is a template.pdf.

 

Here is one way to use the Personal Dictionary with students.

 

1.  Choose words that have these 3 qualities:

            -importance and utility

            -instructional potential

            -conceptual understanding

                    Example: obnoxious

 

2.  Share a story or scenario that will elicit words related to the target word. Ask students to generate words that describe your key character or theme from the story or scenario.

                    Example:  bad, bully, mean, etc.

 

3.  Offer the new vocabulary word to the list and tell students that all the words on the list relate to the target word.

 

4.  Have students select one of the general terms, not the target term and write it at the top of the column. Write the target term next, then the rest of the words below.

 

5.  Write the antonym in the dotted box at the bottom of the list.

 

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The content of these pages has not been reviewed or approved by California State University, Dominguez Hills.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed on unofficial pages of California State University, Dominguez Hills faculty, staff or students are strictly those of the page authors. The content of these pages has not been reviewed or approved by California State University, Dominguez Hills.