Expanding My Teaching Toolbox

"Does anybody remember what drastic means?" I queried.

"Oh, oh! I know!" one student bounced in her seat, eyes sparkling, making a little steeple above her head with her hands and beginning to tilt sideways as if to fall out of her chair.

I quickly stifled a laugh. She had so perfectly imitated my action from the previous day for explaining a vocabulary word, but it was the wrong vocabulary word—topple! I gave her the correct word, and thanked her for proving that actions make vocabulary memorable, so going forward I would use them as much as possible. We’ll just try to keep the action attached to the correct word! 

In another class this week I realized that while all my students would know the word throw as in throw the ball, many of them might be confused about a phrase in the text we were reading: throw the switch. When I looked up throw in the dictionary, I found not just a couple of different ways to use throw, but 25! From throwing a punch to a horse throwing a shoe to a potter throwing a pot on a wheel. And that didn’t include the idioms (like throw in the towel) or phrasal verbs (like throw up and throw open). So I copied just the first 25 uses onto sheets of paper to hand out to the students. First I asked them to brainstorm all the different uses of throw they could think of. They came up with throw away, throw a party, throw yourself off a cliff, and throw yourself into a project. Next, I handed out the sheet and asked them to highlight all the ones they were familiar with, put a star next to the definition for throw the switch, and circle one they didn’t know that they would try to use sometime during the rest of the day. We had a great discussion about how many different ways one word could be used, and why it is important to look at the context and not assume the first dictionary definition is the right one!

Fostering word consciousness is one of the 4 components of vocabulary learning in Robert F. Graves' The Vocabulary Book: Learning and Instruction. Ever since I read that book 6 1/2 years ago, I’ve looked for a variety of ways to talk about words with students. But branching out from English Language Arts (ELA) into English as a Foreign Language (EFL) this year, I felt a need to expand my teaching strategy kit—including more vocabulary teaching strategies. 

Enter The ELL Teacher’s Toolbox by Larry Ferlazzo. I bought it mid-year, so I haven’t even gotten that far in it, but it is bursting with really practical ideas that I’ve used in my ELA class as well, like for reflecting on a term’s independent reading and doing sentence sequencing. (A 7th grader said, “Are we supposed to have memorized this?” I said, “No, but since sentences in a paragraph have been written in a certain order, and you can’t randomly put them in any order and have them make the same meaning, you can look for the clue words that signal how they fit together.” “Oh.”) Here’s one I'm trying next week: Have students take an online vocabulary quiz like this one at Test Your Vocab. Then have them take it later in the year to see their progress! My goal is to try one new strategy a week from this book.

Have a strategic evening!