Metzger-Book Club Blog Reflection

Day 1

Today the students were introduced to their two new vocabulary words or “Hoot Words” as we call them in my classroom. Their new vocabulary words are enormous and admire. I introduced these words to my students by first reading the story The Biggest Pumpkin Ever by Steven Kroll. I did not stop to tell the students in the middle of the story that we had just read one of our new Hoot Words instead I waited until the story was over to let them know which two words they would be working with this week. Once the story and our discussion about the story were completed I introduced the words to the students. I did this by saying “One of our new Hoot Words this week is enormous. Can you all say enormous?” Once they had repeated the word back to me I did not hear anyone saying it incorrectly so I moved on. I have a very limited amount of time with the students to work on vocabulary so instead of asking them to give me their guess as to what the word enormous meant I just gave them the kid friendly definition I found. I said, “Enormous means it is really really big in size or number. It is bigger than huge! Here a few example sentences for you: An elephant is enormous! The crowd at the fair was enormous! So what does enormous mean?” I raised my hand to show that I wanted the students to do the same. I called on one student and he responded with “It means that something is super big like huge but bigger.” I then said, “Thank you Tom. Alright class thumbs up if you agree with what Tom just said and thumbs down if you thing what he said was wrong.” Every student had his or her thumb up so I moved onto admire. I asked the whole class to say admire. There was some difficulty with this one so I repeated it for them and listened carefully until I heard them all pronouncing it correct. Then I said, “Admire means to respect and like someone because they have done something that you think is good. Admire could also mean to look at something and think that it is beautiful. Here are a few example sentences for you: I admire your behavior today because you are listening so well! I admire your outfit today. So who can repeat back to me what admire means?” I again raised my hand to let the students know I would like them to do the same and then I called on Kate. She said, “Admire is when you like something of someone else’s so you tell them.” I said, “Great, that’s one definition who can give me the other?” I then called on Andy, “Like if someone was doing something that is good then you tell them that you admire what they are doing.” I ended my lesson by saying, “Great work boys and girls I am very impressed!”

            Some other interpretations of this material could be that I did not look at all of my student’s performances. Some people may argue that the students can just chime in with what the other students are saying and not really be working with or learning the words. They may think that the students who are shouting things out the loudest really just understand the procedure of what we are doing and not the information. Some other sources may say that the students can fake that they are saying something which would mean that they are not be interacting with the words. This could be by moving their mouth to say what the other students have already said. They could also be moving their mouths just when they notice that I am about to look at them. To these sources I would say that you are right, I did not check in with all of my students about their knowledge of the words but I also know my students. I know which ones never raise their hands because they are not listening and which students are shy. Throughout the whole week we will be interacting with the words and if they do not pick up the definitions it will be apparent when I ask them to write a full sentence using the vocabulary words and to illustrate it. Beyond my objectives I have learned that my students enjoy learning new Hoot Words. This became apparent when the students kept excitedly trying to work them into their own conversations or when we were talking together. I got many more compliments on my outfit than usual. Once one student started to try and use the words in sentences others followed suit. It was very fun to see the students push themselves to use new words and become excited when they realize they used it correctly.  

            With the students that I know are struggling with the Hoot Words I plan on using the words in sentences throughout the week while speaking with them so that they become more comfortable and familiar with them. There are two students that I plan on writing the sentences they dictate to me on the final day because they struggle greatly with writing so if I can at least get them to tell me a sentence and I write it I will be thrilled. If I were to re-teach this lesson I think the only thing that I would do differently would be to ask the students what they first thought the words meant given the sentence it was in for context. This would allow me to see how my students are developing not only in their reading but also in their ability to decode a word based on what else is in a sentence. I think this would improve students learning because it would have them start to think about what they are reading in sentences and how they can figure out a word based on the rest of the sentence and the picture.

            So far in implementing my core practice I have learned that when students are learning new words they need to have repetitive activities to go along with their learning. Having many examples helps the students to get comfortable with the vocabulary. My Core Practice was strategic selection of words to study and by picking words that students can use frequently I am pushing them to take their learning of these words to the next level. We encourage the students to come in and tell my MT and myself when they have heard a Hoot Word out of school because we want them to get use to hearing these words and using these words. Each day throughout the week we are working with these new Hoot Words to get the students use to them and I think that is very important because these are words that can allow students to feel comfortable in future reading levels.  To continue my professional learning I need to make sure I am having the students interact with the words in a correct format. Some activities will work easier for some words then others. As the teacher I need to make sure I am looking at these things and keeping in mind my students abilities. I want to push my students as much as possible but I also want the work to be achievable and have them succeed. An easy way for me to do this will be to play out the activities before I give them to the students.