Vocabulary Development

After reflecting on our discussion on vocabulary and literacy and other discussions this week, two important themes have stood out in particular – the importance of building on previous knowledge and giving students independence.

In thinking about my own experience now as a student, building on previous vocabulary knowledge has been key. I remember one of the first readings I did for before my first class at TCNJ. I felt like a giant question mark was etched in my mind as a flurry of educational mishmash flooded my brain. Since July, I’ve been studying rather intensively – eating, drinking, breathing, dreaming, writing, reading and living elementary education ripe with nuanced vocabulary. As I’ve encountered new vocabulary this week, I see how I’ve been able to activate this schema of new words to consolidate existing knowledge and form a stronger conceptual understanding of terms that were foreign to me just a short time ago. Drawing on this and making connections with what I already learned through the lens of this class has led me to more “a ha! moments” of clarity where I feel I better understand how to apply my learning about literacy to how I’ve taught in the past and how I’ll teach in the future.

As I write now, thinking about my own learning, organizing my thoughts to draw conclusions, I see I am consolidating and building new schemas automatically. But how do I even know how to do that? How am I making meaning and sense of what I am learning? The answer is that great teachers in the past have given me the tools to do so.

I strongly believe reflecting on how we learn ourselves can give us tremendous insight into how to teach. Vocabulary plays a critical role in literacy, but simply introducing new vocabulary isn’t enough. As my own experiences illustrate, connecting words to existing knowledge in context and giving students strategies to activate the language they have with new vocabulary is crucial.

The Vocabulary Self-Collection is a new strategy that stood out for me from the readings as it encompasses prior knowledge, context, motivation, and gives students the autonomy to take ownership of their learning. Students bring to class words they don’t understand and want to learn. They then discuss where they saw it and agree upon words for a class collection of vocabulary. By letting students take charge as “word detectives” they become motivated to learn new words. I can see this collaboration as being so beneficial. Vocabulary learning suddenly becomes a social class activity they can contribute to. Furthermore, actively explaining their rationale for choosing the words and what they thought the words meant requires students to make their thinking visible and activate their previous knowledge.