Week 7 Assignment #3

1.     Explain the three levels of words and how you can use word levels to decide which words to teach.

1-     Familiar Words: these are words that students are familiar with, they recognize them while they are reading a text or in everyday settings. These words come easily to students and need to be reinforced but not the main focus of the lesson.

2-     Words they see in real life: these words are the words that need the most attention. They are works that students hear often but do not know their meaning and how to use them. These are words that you can students bring in from home after watching the news, documentary, or a tv show. They can also be words that students have read in a book, newspaper, or magazine. With the collection of words provided by the students the teacher can then create a lesson around them.

3-     Tech Words: these are words that are outside of the everyday lesson an elementary teacher might teach, it’s a more advanced vocabulary that is “reserved” for a specific content area such as science, art, or social studies. While these words are very important they are not need to be covered in depth at this point.

2.     How do you teach your students to "chunk" words as a strategy for decoding unfamiliar words? When do you provide this instruction?

a.      You teach the students to “chunk” words by breaking the word down. Professor Allington suggested actually tearing the word up into sections that the student does understand by taping the beginning, middle, and end off. If the middle is still too hard then cut that in half, but to do that after you have read the entire sentence. Once you have broken down the word and have an understanding of it, put it back into the sentence to see how well you understand it. The next step is t use your fingers or thumbs to break the word down to try and understand it, usually by 10 days the students will have a handle on it.

b.      I would provide this instruction before and while students are reading a text. I would review the procedure with the class and as I circulate remind students to use the thumb trick we just went over to break down the word.

3.     Based on Professor Allington's comments and the classroom examples, what are some ways you might foster word study in your classroom?

a.      I truly believe there has never been a one size fits all way to teach to our students. Each student learns in his or her own way and we need to differentiate our lessons for our students. A word chart in the front of the room may work for a handful of students but a flash cards or a notebook might work better for another handful of students. So, that is would I would want in my classroom, a word chart for everyone to see, flash cards for students who want to see it up close, and encourage students to write their words in a notebook who will benefit that way.