Blog #9

This week for a vocabulary lesson I have decided to use what Nicole and I had done for our mini lesson based on comprehension and vocabulary. The It Says, I Say, And So is perfect for this type of lesson. I say this because I think that it is a good way to incorporate having students observe vocabulary words in a text and then also they can include pictures. I know that Roll of Thunder does not have illustrations in it so therefore I would use another book for this vocabulary lesson. Then I could include student's interpretations of illustrations in the story to help their comprehension of certain vocab words. When using Roll of Thunder for this lesson I would have students pick a few misunderstood words in each chapter and make a It Says, I Say, And So chart for each word. This chart includes many ways a student can view the word and gather information about it using only themselves and the text. If I were to use another book that had pictures in it I would suggest that the students use what they can infer about the word by using the pictures and words around the vocab word.
There are many ways to include vocab into a classroom other than just creating lesson plans about vocab content. In chapter 6, examples of ways to expand student's knowledge of words were given and most of them seemed like things I could/would do in my classroom. On page 191 the levels of word knowledge seem important not only for the teacher to understand but also the student should understand the process in which they go about learning new words and why it is important. Being able to self-assess I think is a nice way to allow students to understand their own understandings (cannot remember the official name for that!) This way I think that students will realize why vocabulary knowledge is important and how it can help them in the long run.