Reflections: Zull: From Brain to Mind (Part Five)

Chapter Five: Getting the Picture

            In the fifth chapter of his book, Zull shifts focus to the power of an image. He begins the chapter with a description of how one imagine can conjure up another image. In this case, the image of a boy putting his arm around a girl and a knowledge of clouds.  Zull’s research has lead him to assert that images are extremely critical in the journey of Brain to Mind. This chapter was impacted me personally and professionally.  The two most impactful ideas in this chapter to me were: how we need to start teaching the power of images at a young age, and how instructionally we need to be mindful of the images we choose.

Zull believes images are critca to the journey of brain to mind to be particularly true for newborns and toddlers. He believes that we should make sure we are teaching and exposing children to images that are impactful to their lives and meaningful to the child’s development.

            One of the images that Zull feels we should focus on with infants is a face. As a father of a young 22 month-old. I found this section to be personally very interesting. As our son is beginning to learn language and move from babbling to speaking it is amazing to see what words he picks up and words he struggles with. Until reading this section, I assumed it was almost random. But, now looking around our house it makes sense. One of the first words our son really learned was “ball.”  We have lots of balls in all sorts of shapes and sizes, and a lot of his books have pictures of balls in them.  Any round sphere is now a ball. But he probably associated that image as important.  Furthermore, we have always been good about learning facial expressions and showing him faces of our extended family. It is always a nice party trick when he shows up to a family gathering and can say someone’s name after not seeing them in a long time. Zull would probably say that he saw that we were excited when he could see the image and recall its name and he felt rewarded therefore he wanted to repeat the process numerous times. 

            As for my professional life, I found myself wondering about how I use images in my classroom. More specifically what am I using the images for? What is there purpose. Zull states in the section, “Being Mindful” on page 136 that images should be: complex, cause genuine reflection, and are personal. In my classroom I can think of two major uses of images, one for vocabulary, and one for close reading.

            Every few weeks, I give my students a cumulative vocabulary quiz. It is essentially a review test of previous quizzes. In order to review I play a review game that combines Pictionary and Charades. The class is divided into teams and each team sends up a volunteer and the student then must either act out the word or draw the word. The students really do get into the game, even though they do not win a prize. However, now I understand the benefits of the game. The students are remembering the actions or drawings of the volunteers and associating it with the word. So later when they see a word like, “bequeath” the student associates the word with a student “dying and giving me his wallet as a ghost”.  Much like how Zull associates the names of clouds with young love. The images created by the students are complex, and personal. They remember the image over a rote definition.

            The other common way I incorporate images into my curriculum is when I teach and reteach close reading. I find students learn better when they understand the “why” not just the “what” so to teach why we close read I like to use images and movie clips. I use old “Highlights” magazine hidden images pictures throughout the year as a warm-up activity. I use the image to reinforce the idea in students that they may see the picture but miss the details, and when we close read we need to understand all the details in the picture. On one hand, it is fun, not time consuming, and my students enjoy trying to find the hidden pictures. On the other hand, students are making the connection to “re-reading” the picture and “re-reading” the text. 

An activity I also use that goes hand-in-hand with the “Highlights” pictures is I like to show movie clips from classic movies and have students watch multiple viewings of them and watch as the students’ understanding of the movie grows. One particularly powerful clip comes from “North By Northwest” an Alfred Hitchcock movie. In the film, there is a scene in which the main character shoots a woman in a restaurant at Mt. Rushmore. After the first “read” of the movie I ask basic questions such as, “Who is the good guy?” and “Where are they?”. Without fail most students think the hero is the bad guy, because he shoots a woman, and they are just at a restaurant. Mt. Rushmore is prominently featured in the background taking up almost half the screen and yet my students miss it.  So like Zull suggested, I pause it, and let students digest what they are seeing. Even without the context of the whole movie students begin to see that the setting of Mt. Rushmore must be crucial to the setting of the movie.  I have found this activity to be very successful in showing students why you re-read and how even good readers miss important details the first time.  The images become a way for my students to understand the “why” of close reading and not just the “what”. They remember not seeing the hidden object at first, or the giant president’s head in the background when they read and know that is why they should re-read they may have missed something.

After reading Zull, I firmly believe that I should double down on these practices next year. I use to know they were impactful but not why they were impactful. After reading this section I now understand why students enjoy these activities and why they are learning from them.  I am going to challenge myself to try to incorporate more images (both mine and student created) into my lessons next year. The power of images is something I am not tapping into that I feel could positively impact my students’ growth in the classroom. 

Reflections on: Zull: From Brain to Mind (Part Four)

Chapter Four: Deeper Learning Through Integration

            In the fourth chapter, Zull aims to discuss how and why “we want learners to go beyond borrowed knowledge and skills and develop their own thoughts and ideas.” (84)  In this chapter Zull continues his overall themes of: choice in education and how an intrinsically motivated student is more apt to learn.  As a secondary teacher the two most striking sections in this chapter were “Integrating the Subjects” and “Dependency.”  His arguments are succinct and I find myself agreeing with him, yet I wonder how practical they could truly be. It would take a dramatic overhaul of the current education model. But then again, maybe we need to occasionally turn things on their head. We live in a different time period, and we have more knowledge. Why not use the new knowledge by putting it to better use in the classroom? As I read chapter four I found myself getting energized for next school year. I can easily imagine implementing Zull’s ideas in this chapter into my current classroom.

            One of the most obvious ways I can see implanting his ideas came in the section “Integrating the Subjects” on page 100.  I predominately teach 7^th and 8^th grade students, however, I fortunately get to also teach AP Language and Composition and AP Literature and Composition (the courses alternate each year).  This section got me thinking about my AP sections. In both sections students are required to read and dissect classic texts (in the form of: novels, essays, speeches etc.) in order to show an academic understanding of the author’s indent in writing or delivering the text.  An unavoidable truth about the course is that students possessing a strong grasp of history, particularly social history, do better than students who lack this background knowledge.  Every year I encourage students to take their history course seriously because it will help in their understanding of why these works are so highly valued by our society.  Zull would argue that the students are categorizing history as a standalone class and English as separate class. This may be the first time the students are seeing the importance of how one class can affect another. As I was reading this I kept thinking about how easily it would be to try and coordinate with the history teacher in order to try align our curriculums in a way that would be help our students.  Could we even co-teach at times in order to help fill in the gaps?

I attempted this idea with our AP Biology teacher this past year and it worked out really well. He had the students read a non-fiction book about a scientific principal they would cover in class and write an academic paper on the text.  I helped the students learn how to “read” a non-fiction work in order to write the paper and he helped them understand the ideas presented in the book.  We both felt that is was a rewarding experience for the students and as we had many of the same students it was mutually beneficial in that I was able to reinforce a reading and writing practice and he could use the assignment to differentiate his instruction based on the student’s interest.  I would love to take this model and apply to the history department. I think my students’ analysis would greatly improve if their historical background improved. Furthermore, as Zull suggests, if students begin to see how one course can impact another they may begin to see education as a whole, and not just “I like math, and hate English” so I try in one class and not the other.

            As much as the section energized me about next year the section “Dependency,” on page 104, filled me with courage to try something again.  In this section, Zull argues for more open-ended assignments that are student driven. I tried it this year - to mixed results. 

            Each week, I have the students read an article of the week. They can pick from four to six articles and they need to write a short response to the article. The articles range in difficulty and in topics.  For the most part, most students liked the articles.  Towards the middle of the year, I had the students select their favorite article, and then I gave them a couple of Fridays to further research the topic of their article.  I read that Apple and Google give their workers a “genius hour” and let them work on anything they want; I was trying to use this model in my classroom. To do this, I gave my students several Fridays to research and then they had to “present” me with something showing me what they learned. I encouraged brochures or posters.  Optimistically, it went okay. Realistically it went great for my “top” section and lower sections but not so great for my “middle” section. The top section ran with it, and loved it, furthermore the lower section really got into researching the topic. Their overall products were not as good, but the time and effort they put in was fascinating to watch. They genuinely were interested in learning. However, my “middle” group just wanted to complete the task. Their research was uninspired, and it showed in their work.

I was very disappointed in the outcome because I was hoping that if I gave students a choice, and let them discover information they would challenge themselves and be rewarded for their efforts by learning something on their own. Instead I felt like they just saw it as another assignment they needed to complete. At the end of the year I was leaning on not doing this part of the assignment again.  But after reading this book I feel re-energized about the assignment. I feel that Zull would encourage work like this, and it is possible that the students have never been allowed to do something like this before and didn’t know how to do it. So instead of being dejected and quitting I think I should double-down and do more assignments like this.  I obviously need to revisit the assignment and look at how I can change it to help my students best, and I need to patient. It may take some students several attempts at working in this structure to have success. I may struggle, but I feel that it is a valid struggle.

As previously, stated this chapter was very energizing for me. I liked how succinct his writing is and how he challenges the status quo.  I imagine he is an advocate for challenging students with difficult tasks, that have real outcomes. I think if I would have had him as a science teacher in high school, or college my career path may have been different.     

Reflections on: Zull: From Brain to Mind (Part Three)

Chapter Three: Finding Freedom, Finding the Joy

            In the third chapter of his book, From Brain to Mind Zull focuses on how learning takes place through action but learning is driven by emotion. Zull opens with a narrative about a time when he had to teach himself a theory and the struggles that came with teaching himself. Zull stumbled upon the realization that the struggle is worth it because in the end he felt true happiness in overcoming a difficult task and learning something on his own accord. I feel Zull would approve of the idea of students working on their own, and teachers differentiating their instruction to meet the needs of their students.  For me, my two most impactful sections were, “Mistakes and Joyful Education,” and “Do Front Cortex Things,” because as a secondary teacher I can immediately imagine an impact on our students if our school implemented this philosophy.

            In the section “Mistakes and Joyful Education” Zull espouses the idea that students should struggle, and be allowed to struggle. In fact, he even states teachers should be concerned if a student is not making any mistakes.  I love the idea of trial and error in education. I feel as long as a student is not demoralized with repeated failures it is so beneficial for them to learn how to overcome failure and learn the joys of success and hard work. 

This past school year I was working with a student on a story in which they had to write about the day in the life of a middle school student who was the opposite gender of them. So boys had to write about a girl’s day and vice versa. The goal in my mind was to teach them how author’s use different perspectives in their writing and how when you write you need to use details and other clues to help the reader picture the story.  This young male student wrote a very generic story about a girl, and normally he is a very strong writer but this was not his best writing. During a conference I asked him what was going on, and he said that he didn’t know “girl stuff” and wanted me to help him. So I told him no. This was shocking to him. But I told him if he kept trying I would help. Eventually after another draft or two, he was able to flesh out his character.  At the end of the year I usually give the kids a survey to fill out and he said that this story was his favorite because he worked so hard on it. I think Zull would say that it was his favorite because he found the joy in his work. He expected me to tell him what to write and instead he found it himself and gained confidence as a writer.

The second takeaway for me in chapter three was the section “Do Front Cortex Things.”  This past year I have been lucky enough to be put in an unofficial coaching role in my school. I still have classes but I lead professional developments and work with teachers on a variety of subjects. One piece of advice I keep telling teachers is, “choice, choice, choice.” I have seen the benefits in my own room, and this year I was able to see the benefits in other disciplines as well. I try hard to allow my students a choice in an existing framework as Zull mentioned and I have really seen my students flourish.  This past year I made my AP students do an independent literature project in which they were required to read additional novels outside of the class novel and write about it, and discuss it with peers in the class. I was hesitant that I would receive a lot of pushback from my students because of the additional workload of yet another book and paper, but was pleasantly surprised to find out most of the enjoyed the assignment. As the year went on they regularly commented on how they liked reading at their own pace, and having the ability to pick a text from a list, instead of being told what to read. When reading this chapter, it was hard not to think of my AP class, and how well they responded to the choice and how it will (hopefully) positively impact their AP scores. 

I know creating an environment where students can struggle, sometimes fail, and have choice can be challenging and sometimes even daunting but the benefits far out way the work.  I always feel as though my fall and early winter are chaotic because I am establishing my routines and creating a safe environment for kids to fail. But I have noticed each year as I get better at teaching my late winter and spring slow down and my colleagues speeds up. Students get bored in other classes and behavior issues arise. This is not to say I have no behavior problems or that I am a master teacher but I truly feel that a lot of my successes have come from giving students choices in what they work on, and allowing them to work through failures. I understand now that Zull would back this assertion because the brain is actually rewarding my students and intrinsically motivating them to do better and learn more.

 Throughout this chapter I kept thinking of my struggling learners. Specifically, how we (meaning educators) eliminate options for them, and try to spoon feed them answers because school is too hard, or they are behaviorally difficult. I wonder how we can take the ideas Zull presents and apply it to students who struggle at an early age and try to “catch” them before they fall through the cracks?  I don’t have an answer but I do feel a new sense of purpose for the upcoming year in trying to figure out a way to reach my struggling learners. 

Reflections on: Zull: From Brain to Mind (Part Two)

Chapter Two: A Journey

                Zull’s second chapter focuses on discovery and action. More specifically how one mimics and action or skill until he or she can master the task.  As in chapter one Zull weaves in a narrative about a formative educational experience in his own life. This narrative serves as connective tissue throughout the text for the reader to understand the difficult topics Zull tackles in the chapter. In my opinion, the biggest takeaways from this chapter came from the sections: Action is for the Learner, Talk to Learn and finally the section, Write.

            One of the earliest sections of chapter two entitled Action is for the Learner, hit home for me as we wrap up another school year. I thought Zull’s line, “Action is a test of learning, but only the learner can know the motive or the outcome of the test.” was important and something I think would require many of my colleagues to stop in their tracks. A lot of my peers focus so much time and energy into having our students master the PSSAs and Keystones that the students are unaware of why they need to know something. The answer is always “it’s on the test” which I am not advocating we don’t prepare our students for testing I am just saying that we can go too far and only prepare them for a test. A good reader, writer and thinker will pass the test, but a good test taker may not be able to read, writer or think. I feel that Zull advocates throughout this chapter for an education system that places more emphasis on why a student is learning something and less emphasis on what did they learn, or what can they mimic back. Did the lesson stick with them or is it simply just a task needed to master before they can leave the grade, or graduate?

            The second biggest takeaway for me in this chapter came towards the end of the chapter in the sections, “Talk to Learn” and “Writing”. In these sections Zull discusses the role of talking and writing and the impact of discussion and writing on a person’s education. In the section “Talk to Learn” Zull uses a vignette of a carpenter talking himself through a problem as a way to show the benefits of talking in the classroom.  This struck a chord with me because I have a classroom has been described to me by a peer as “busy” which I took as a euphemism for “why are your kids talking so much and moving around.” This came a day before one of my formal observations from my principal. So needless to say when the observation came and my class was “busy” I got extremely nervous. During our post-observation conference my principal had extremely nice things to say about how great it was to see the students excited about a topic, and working with energy on an academic assignment.  She said that some of her observations are so boring because the kids just sit there and copy notes. The sense of relief I felt afterwards was enormous.  I know, from conferencing with my students, talking through their writing has benefited my students. They have told me that when they talk through the topic they feel their writing is stronger and better organized than when they have to construct a piece of writing on their own. They love to “bounce ideas” off of one another.  

            The final takeaway for me is closely connected to talking and that is writing.  I loved the line, “I propose that learners should write for the explicit purpose of thinking.”  I could not agree with Zull more.  I feel that especially in older grades writing has become a lost art.  Teachers in other disciplines do not teach writing, because that is what English is for, and even more commonly, it is hard to teach and grade. Writing is time consuming. But does it have to be? The writing that Zull is proposing is not a formal writing, it is simply using language as a way to slow students down and force them to think about what they are doing. Teenagers are impulsive and what to take shortcuts (some adults to do) but writing is a task that requires you to sit and think. It requires thought, and time- two things teenagers hate. 

This year I’ve been lucky enough to lead several trainings on TDA’s at our I.U. and within my district. One of the biggest complaints I hear is about how long it is to teach the concepts needed to write a TDA.  I always tell the teachers that if you break it apart and do it repeatedly throughout the year the time it takes students will decrease, they will become masters of the task. I feel validated by this section and chapter in my statements. I feel that Zull would advocate for more reading and discussing in a classroom. Furthermore, I feel with more volume of discussion and writing the quality will go up. As long as the teacher is there to guide the students in the right direction.

Overall, I found this chapter to be very interesting. I very much enjoy how he weaves stories into the topics. For me as a reader it is much easier to follow along and apply them to my own classroom experience because of the stories. Without them I think I would feel the writing would be dry and difficult to grasp. I have enjoyed the first two chapters and look forward to the rest. 

Reflections on: Zull: From Brain to Mind (Part One)

Chapter One: The Natural Journey from Brain to Mind

                The first chapter of James Zull’s book From Brain to Mind serves as an introduction, or roadmap, for the rest of the work. Zull briefly explains each of the forthcoming chapters, in a succinct and highly readable fashion.  Throughout the chapter Zull uses the metaphor of the journey as a way to describe and introduce his topic. He begins to talk about the educational process and history, citing Piaget, Dewy, and Kolb. Zull’s use of providing the journey metaphor is effective in helping the reader prepare for the upcoming chapters. By providing a history of how our knowledge of neuroscience is linked to educational practices, Zull forces the reader to examine his or her own classroom practices.

The most powerful part of the chapter for me was the “Education” section.  After reading this section, I had to pause and reflect (I’m still reflecting) on my own classroom practices and curriculum. I found myself asking, “How many Henry’s am I teaching?” or rather “Do I cater to Henry, or real world implications of my subject?”  I currently teach in a small rural district. The building is a 7-12 building and I teach 7^th and 8^th grade English primarily.  Additionally, I teach a section of AP English.  Zull’s section on Education is giving me fits and rewarding me at the same time. I feel as though we as a district provide numerous opportunities for real world learning, yet at the same time we are a district that is very focused on testing, not real world implications.     

One of the benefits of teaching in a smaller district is the ability to take field trips with our students. We recently went to Antietam Battlefield.  The trip was extremely rewarding because for many students, it was their first time going to a historical battlefield. The students were able to actually see what they have been studying in history class.  The passion of the tour guide spilled over into our students. Zull’s line “We may learn more from experiences outside of school than those inside” struck a chord with me.  As a teacher I can only impact their experiences outside of school to a point, but with trips, the impact I can have is much greater.

As far as in-school impact we can have on our students,  I believe Zull would be an advocate for authentic literacy and authentic writing.  I believe one of the issues troubling my district is the lack of authenticity in our curriculum.  Zull appears to be advocating an educational system in which students can apply the skills they are learning in the classroom to the real world. Friday is graduation in my district, and I wonder if I have taught my AP students the necessary skills to be successful college students, or did I just make it possible for them to pass the AP test?   Furthermore, are my middle school students understanding why being able to analyze and discuss a text in the form of a TDA will be beneficial to their life or is it just a way for them to show growth on the PSSA?  These questions have been racing through my head since reading the chapter.

This section made me think of a writing activity I do toward the end of the school year about professional voice. I have the students write a professional letter to their favorite author.  Because we actually mail the letters, the students take more pride in their work.  We have received many letters in return which always motivates the students further.  I think this “real writing” activity, although never tested, is more beneficial to students. They are seeing the result of a well written letter, which is similar to how Zull saw the real world benefit of his basketball court.   My students are seeing the benefit of this activity. One student in particular wrote to Phil Robertson of Duck Dynasty fame and got a reply. He is not a strong writer by any means, but because of this real world writing activity, he has begun to see the benefits of writing as a way to effectively communicate with one another.  

Another major point of reflection occurred for me when Zull previewed the Transformation section of the book. I loved the call to action he advocates for in the section.  The call to action is  very similar to the education section in that Zull is advocating that we learn how to use education for good, which is something I try to instill in my students each year. I am relatively new at teaching (this is my third year) but I hope that in my short time, I’ve helped my students become better, deeper thinkers.  I really love teaching writing because I feel that if a student writes well and can expand on their thoughts in a coherent way, they will be able to think deeply as they grow up and become adults.   

            I am very much looking forward to continuing the book. I think his writing is very readable and I believe that his work will be very applicable to my classroom. I think it is easy to teach grammar as a way of rote memory, or drill and kill as I’ve heard it called. But instead, I find it is more beneficial for students to understand why we have grammatical rules. I feel that this book will help reinforce that feeling for me as a teacher.  

One to One Recognition

So the video below is my attempt at learning how to teach children one to one recognition. Using Marie Clay's work as a guide this video will show process of teaching one to one matching. The process is one that reinforces to children what a word is. The accuracy of their reading comes later. This is about matching the words on the page to the words coming out of the child's mouth.

You'll see this in three steps:

1. They will follow toys with their finger
2. They will say something as they point...introducing audio
3. They will point to words on a pages 

and for a bonus

1. They will be flexible with this process.

Once again the purpose of the exercises are to reinforce what a word is. To show students that the whit space matters. This could have huge ESL implications too. Think of a student who reads right to left or vertically, reading English would be daunting. These simple procedures will be of a huge benefit.

The video is not perfect but I hope you enjoy. 

Word Knowledge and Fluency

                What is Word Work? And who cares? (At least according to me)

              

            When teaching students to read you want to hit on the big five (phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension) right. Everyone knows this. Sounds easy right. Well anyone who has tried can tell you it is hard. One of the ways a teacher, or a parent can help children learn to read is to implement word work strategies on a daily basis.

I would define word work as working with words on a daily basis in an authentic way.  This may be word sorting, word listing, etc. there are a variety of ways this could happen. Students should do this every day and when they do it they need to make the lesson become almost automatic.  This automaticity helps aid in our learning because what happens in our brain when we learn something is that new synapsis fire and new connections are made, and if we don’t reinforce this new knowledge the connection will get severed and we will forget it. (My apologies for the simplicity of the last sentence, I know the brain is more complicated but you get my point)  Because we may forget new information, this is why it is so important to repeat things to students about letters and reading. And furthermore why it is so important for students to repeatedly sort words for meaning because that will reinforce the word.

Word work helps student read in a variety of ways. One way is decoding. A person can only spend so much time and energy on one thing at a time. Think about, reading is tough, we are taking weird shapes and assigning them sounds that we’ve all agreed to and somehow we make meaning out of that. It is easy if you know the sounds and the meaning behind the sounds, but what if you struggle. You are going to spend all your time trying to sound out words and you will forget what you are even reading about in the first place. Is it any wonder some people hate reading.

What word work does is helps students reinforce phonic sounds and patterns and therefore their reading fluency can improve. If a student works on the /st/ sound for a few days during word work in class. They will eventually know how to tackle a word like “crustacean” or “streamline” more easily than they would by simply trying to sound it out.  Because it is easier for them they will not need to work as hard and therefore they can read at a faster rate. More importantly they won’t struggle as much when they read and may enjoy reading more.

Research Matters:

I know what you are probably thinking, who are you do make such claims. Well I am not an expert by any means, but my opinions are based on facts. Three article I’d like to highlight are: “Developmental-Spelling Research: A Systemic Imperative” by Marcia Invernizzi and Latisha Hayes, “Word Study Instruction in the K-2Classroom” by Cheri Williams, with several others and finally “Vocabulary: Questions from the classroom” by Camille Blachowicz.   

In their article “Developmental-Spelling Research: A Systematic Imperative” Marcia Invernizzi and Latisha Hayes discuss this at length. It is their work that most of my opinions are formed.  Something I found very interesting that they highlighted was how prevalent word work is now in our education system. They discuss how “Virtually every teacher’s manual in every major reading series at least nominally suggest word sorts.” A word sort is when a student sorts words based on some criteria. You can have an open sort when students pick the word or a closed sort where an instructor gives criteria.  They believe that word sorts aid in helping students learn to spell. Because of the patters being reinforced and not just a random list of words. The student learns the phonic pattern and then can apply that knowledge later to new words. This way of thinking is very different than the old “spelling list” in which students were forced to memorize a random list of words. They advocate for a systematic approach to teaching spelling and phonics in their classroom. I feel they can best be summed up by their statement:

As knowledge of the phoneme-grapheme relations expands, students begin to acquire many sight words, and they move into independent reading about the same time they begin to navigate through the pattern tier of English spelling. The more the students read, write and learn about the spelling system, the larger their vocabulary grows. Before you know it, students are learning and remember so many words that their lexicons abound with words of more than on syllable…

                  Think about how powerful of a tool this is for young emergent readers. We can equip them with the skills necessary to tackle words they’ve never even heard of before! That is awesome. If you can instill a love of language into children at a young age think of the implications later in life for that student, not only academically but also in the real world.  In a little way this helps them tackle problems head on and to relate new things to old things in order to create meaning. Wow! That is an awesome thought to think about.

                In Cheri Williams article “Word Study Instruction in the K-2 Classroom” she defines word study as “an approach to spelling instruction that moves away from a focus on memorization.” For example “students come to understand that the second vowel in compose is spelled with an “o” because it is related to compose” This reinforces what we’ve been discussing. That this is a movement away from memorizing and into actually understanding the language. Williams has four approaches to implementing word study:

1.       Assess Students’ Word Knowledge Using Multiple Assessment Tools

2.        Use a Homogeneous Small-Group Approach to Instruction

3.       Carve Out Time to Prepare for Word Study Instruction

4.       Teach Word Knowledge Not Just Words

In my opinion number four is the hardest but most important. If you can teach student word knowledge they can exceed our expectations. If we teach them a word list they will memorize it.  Below is an example of a teacher doing word work with two second grade students:

Video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EvdeFqPrQCQ

Analysis:

                Overall I think this is an okay example. I think that it is good the students are writing the words down. But I think for overall time it would have been faster to do a word sort. They could have covered more words. However, some positives that I saw were her interactions and her accountability of her students.  In her interactions with the two students she stayed on task, it is a small clip but I feel that a rehearsal would have strengthened this. She did rehearse the sounds a few times with them but not as a model. As far as accountability is concerned I like that she did not tell the students the answers. They had to arrive on it on their own. Far too often we rush through lessons and we never let students learn. They just listen to us talk. This doesn’t help anyone.

                Finally as a secondary teacher this is a whole new world to me. I don’t carve out time to teach phonic sounds. But the concepts could be applied to vocabulary words. In Blachowicz’s article “Vocabulary: Questions from the classroom” she argues for the use of “new words, wordplay, playful word practice and other techniques for motivating” and furthermore states that we should have “an emphasis on semantic relatedness” and that “instruction provides both definitional and contextual information about words.”  This is important because the core ideas are there. In an AP English class when a new book is being discussed instead of working from a generic list students could be involved in authentic word work that would help aid their reading instead of just regurgitating a word list.

Final thoughts…a “so what” if you will:

                As I stated previously I am a secondary school teacher and old enough that I never really did this kind of word work as a student. So when I started researching it I was skeptical. But upon researching word work and its implication on fluency, spelling etc. I am a believer. I think word work should be an essential part of every classroom. It helps prepare students to read on their own, which after all is the goal. We want our students to take these skills with them the rest of their lives. They can be in a meeting and say “sorry that wasn’t a vocab word I don’t know what that means, or how to say it.” We want students that are capable of understand and manipulating the language so that they can communicate their ideas in ways that will benefit all of us.