Lara
December 2, 2009 at 11:53 pm
Okay, I’m going to take a moment to not be modest at all and say that vocab is one of the parts of my job I do really well. And most of the reason why I do it well is because I make my kids understand those words inside and out, mostly by assessing them in lots of ways. They have to be able to match it to synonyms, match it to antonyms, define it, use it in a sentence, and/or recognize whether it is being used correctly in someone else’s sentence. I had numerous students (and parents of students) who had me last year come thank me because of how much their vocab scores improved on SATs and other standardized tests.
All that to say that I totally agree with you – memorizing a nonsense (to them) definition is useless if they don’t actually know what the word means. Oh those dumb teenagers. How we love them anyway.
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3 Comments.
Edward Carson
November 17, 2009 at 9:00 am
I keep a file of old letters, notes, cards, emails, etc in my desk for those tough days. I pull it out when I am having one to remind me that I love this. For me, its usually not students that make my days tough. You are a great teacher. That is clear.
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1 Comment.
Edward Carson
October 12, 2009 at 9:02 am
I have heard of a number of progressive schools that do this. I assume you still assign a letter, right? Man, I have a hard enough time getting letter grades turned in on time. I do think your method is a more reliable one.
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