By Jessica Salfia
Vocabulary. It can be the worst, amiright?
It’s been one of the most polarizing topics in many of the workshops and professional development seminars I’ve been in. Most teachers believe it’s difficult to teach well, and many teachers I’ve talked to about teaching vocabulary have two main complaints: it takes up way too much time, and the kids don’t really learn the words in the long term, memorizing them only long enough to pass a quiz.
But it’s also so, so easy. Kids are trained to grab those worksheets, flip to the glossary, and copy down those definitions. And they can do this with little to no critical thinking. Heck, they can do this with little to no thinking period. It’s automatic and painless, and this can be appealing to both teachers and students. A nice little break for everybody, right? But getting stuck in a vocab rut can be dangerous. Those quickly copied and memorized definitions often are not retained, and the way words work and move in language is often not learned at all when using “traditional” vocab methods.
So how do we do it? How do we expand vocabularies, and get kids to really own a word and its meaning? After all, much of the ACT and SAT is in fact vocabulary and context. This is integral part of our English curriculums.
I’ve seen a gamut of ways to teach vocab words. Some teachers have tried songs, others memorization. Some enterprising teachers get creative with cartoons like the one below:
Your Mission? Operation Vocab!
(insert Mission Impossible soundtrack here)
I use a version of this activity at least once or twice each nine weeks with various texts. HERE is a sample handout I used this year with Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Handsomest Drowned Man in the World.
Here's how it works:
After reading the short story, essay, excerpt, poem, or article you are studying, have students identify five words in the piece they did not know before. These can be words they have seen before, but are unsure of their meaning, but preferably they need to pick out words they have never encountered before. Have students copy these down onto a handout or on a sheet of notebook paper.
Divide students into groups of 3 or 4. Each student will be assigned a role (with a catchy name, of course)-
After students are grouped and roles are assigned, students will share their vocab lists with each other. If anyone in the group can define a word for another member of the group, he or she should do so now. This is a 5-10 minute block of time in which the goal is simply to have conversations within the group about the words they didn’t know. Some sample questions for them to use in this discussion are-
After the “conversation” window has closed, and some of the words will have been defined by members of the group, the Scribe will write down the words that no one in the group could define (leaving space for definitions).
He or she then will give the list to the Vocab Secret Agent. The Vocab Secret Agent may now get up, and go visit other groups to see if anyone else can define his or her group's “undefinable” words. (The cool part here is that the other members of the group are not sitting idle. They’re talking to the Secret Agents from other groups about their vocab lists. (This is a bit of organized chaos, but totally worth it.) This should take about 5-10 minutes.
When all Secret Agents have returned to their groups and reported what they’ve learned, only then can the groups use dictionaries, phone apps, or laptops to define the rest of their words on their lists.
After all the words have been defined, the group must discuss and choose three that they think are essential to understanding the story/essay/poem/excerpt/article. This creates conversation about both the vocab and the reading. What you should be seeing at this point is kids engaging in discussion about words, their meanings and functions, and how they affect the over all purpose of a work. And your teacher heart will grow three sizes.
The Scribe will go and write his or her group's three essential words on the board. Depending on the size of your class this will create a vocab list of 3-10 words (some words will be repeated between groups). As a class, go over the definitions of these words, and perhaps have a short Socratic style discussion as to why these words are essential to understanding the reading selection. This part is important. This is where the students “get” why understanding diction is essential to analysis. It connects the dots for them, and vocabulary no longer becomes a mindless, busy-work task, but an integral part of literary and rhetorical analysis.
Optional last step- If you have a few classes doing this activity, have each period put their words up on the board in a column labeled with their class period, and then create the main and final vocab list from the words the different classes had in common as words essential to understanding the reading. This creates an “in-real life” vocab wiki-list, and the different periods throughout the day love seeing what the other classes are thinking.
By the time the final list is created, your students will have talked about and owned these words in a few different ways, and the meaning and context will be so much richer for them than doing the standard “write the definitions”. It also keeps vocab lists limited to just a few words.
This activity does take 2-3 days so I don’t use it every time I need to address vocab, but it is by far the most effective vocab lesson I use. I generally assess the final vocab list in the traditional way with a paper/pencil quiz that requires students to use the word correctly in a sentence.
Now it’s your turn!
What is the most effective way you address vocabulary in your classroom? Do you have a vocabulary assessment that isn’t a traditional paper/pencil test? What is it?
Your mission if you choose to accept it: adapt and share any good strategies you get from this post.
Leave us a comment, Tweet us your thoughts @WVCTE, or connect with us on Facebook!
(Hopefully, this blog post won’t self-destruct in 10 seconds…)
Jessica Salfia teaches AP English, English 11, Mythology, and Creative Writing at Spring Mills High School in Berkeley County, WV. Jessica has been teaching in Berkeley County, WV for 12 years, and also serves as an adjunct professor at Shepherd University in Shepherdstown, WV. Before she became a teacher, she was mediocre white-water rafting guide on the Cheat River, and feels that these exploits best prepared her for the adventure of being a classroom teacher. Her most recent venture has been to work with her best pal, Karla Hilliard, to rebuild the West Virginia affiliate of NCTE, WVCTE. Jessica is an accomplished writer of both fiction and poetry, and has been a finalist in the WV Fiction Competition in 2016, 2015, 2014, and 2013. Her work has appeared in the Anthology of Appalachian Writers Volumes III, IV, V, VI, VII, and VIII. When she’s not writing or teaching, you can find Jessica in her garden or chasing her three lovely children or sitting at a ball field watching her husband coach the Spring Mills Cardinals baseball team. You can check out what Jessica is doing in her classroom by visiting www.salfiaenglishclass.weebly.com, or by following her on Twitter, @jessica_salfia.