Regardless of whether it is word games, or games with words, using printed words in the form of games is one great idea on how to promote "decoding" in your classroom. In the Yopp and Yopp article, I appreciated their strategies to make words have more of an association with the text. However, I wonder if this really works? It seems like their suggestions of writing down main words from the text, breaking the students up into groups, asking those groups specific questions, having whole-class discussions, and then lecturing obased off those words seem a little abstract. I wonder if the kids can still recall the definitions of the words once they go home that night? I wonder if there is another way to introduce and use vocabulary at the middle/ high school level? What are your thoughts? I do agree with Yopp and Yopp, however, that this method is probably a lot more effective than rote memorization and repetitive word lists of vocabulary.
In the Cunningham and Cunningham article (...side note- did it strike anyone else as odd that both of the articles we were assigned to read were written by two authors of the same name? mother/daughter and husband/wife...just random), I actually DID like their Making Words game that they have created. I think this would be a great thing to implement in the classrooms at the school for the deaf. Deaf kids have a hard time with language of any sorts; partially because it is so abstract, and partially because they cannot hear the sounds of spoken English. This game, Making Words, would be highly useful to teach blends, familiar patterns, the necessity of a vowel in every word, and so much more! I will try this activity with my students very soon!
I think that you are right about some of the ideas being abstract. To answer your do students remember it when they get home??? I know that I always did at least remember some concepts of the lesson if there was an interactive element to it. If I just sat there and read or listened I did not usually remember it. But that's just me!!
ReplyDeleteTo respond to the first part of your blog...I believe that this method would definitely help students remember the words better once they get home at night. They have had a change to dig deep into the definition of the word by having to make sentences understanding the meaning and forming other words. By pushing students to think critically about these new vocabulary words, it helps them have a deeper understanding of what the word means, and can even open new doors to other words that might have the same meaning.
ReplyDeleteI really liked the second article too, I am currently working with a child who is deaf at my church. He has a hearing aid and so he can hear (I don't know if the students you work with are similar) but I found it very challenging to read with him. What I find to work out really well is I say a word and he signs it to me, or vice versa. We kind of make a game out of it and work with words that way. I am not a deaf ed major so I don't know if this is proper instruction, however he likes it and his reading has greatly improved since we have been working together!
ReplyDeleteCiera- any language intervention strategies you can use with a deaf child (or any child!) are wonderful! If you see success, continue on! Most of the things they teach us in deaf education are more-or-less basic principles of education. Keep up the good work!
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