Issue 62: Sep 28, 2009 Connections Newsletter

Activating Strategies Provide the “Hook ‘n Link” to Engage and Improve Learning

Denise Burson
Sep 28, 2009

Activating Strategies are the key element in focusing students at the beginning of a lesson.  They offer us the opportunity to create a teachable moment rather than waiting on the vagaries of chance.  By piquing students' interests from the beginning we have the chance to channel their natural energy and enthusiasm into a positive classroom mode.  Activating Strategies also allow us to create a basis of knowledge and familiarity with information or topics which our students may not have encountered before.

Below is an activity by Dr. Joyce Melton Pagés you may be able to use/adapt for your classroom:

Activating Strategy – Scavenger Hunt
This strategy involves students in reading, using references, organizing, collaborating, and many other activities!  They read these words in a wide variety of references and discover their relevance in the real world.  With this strategy, children actually learn their vocabulary words---and they have fun doing it!

How is the Scavenger Hunt used?  
The Scavenger Hunt is used to activate thinking, heighten student interest and motivation on a topic before a unit begins. This provides students with necessary prior knowledge to begin the unit of study. This strategy is not only enjoyable for teachers and students, but it serves to expose students to vocabulary associated with a subject before the subject is actually studied. By the time they have finished, students will know more about the topic than when they started.

Steps for Getting Started:

Step 1.   A few days before a new unit of study, the teacher announces the topic for that unit and distributes a list of vocabulary words and concepts to the class. Have the students form small groups---usually three or four students per group.  Provide a list of five to eight words for primary grade children.  Intermediate grade students can have longer lists.  The Vocabulary Scavenger Hunt list should contain the key words that will support the teaching unit or inquiry unit to be implemented.  For example, a list of vocabulary words related to a weather unit might include some of the following words:

climate

clouds

air pressure

lightning

meteorologist

barometer

water cycle

thunderstorm

thermometer

tornado

rainfall

flood

forecast

hurricane



Step 2.  Each team is given an identical list of terms for the scavenger hunt.  Provide the children with time to search for the words.  Have the students use library books, encyclopedias, dictionaries, newspapers, magazines, textbooks, internet web sites, and other appropriate resources at school and at home to find the words on the list.  They should collect examples of the words, create sentences using the words (including enough context to support meaning making), collect pictures, draw pictures, build models or examples, etc.  Tell students how much each item or example is worth in terms of points.  A possible way to assign points could be:  5 points for building a model representing the word/process 3 points for finding a newspaper/magazine article about the word/process 2 points for finding a book about the word/process OR a picture about the word/process OR a description in a dictionary, encyclopedia, or almanac about the word/process OR drawing a picture of the word/process

Step 3.  Allow the teams to meet a few minutes every day to assess how they’re progressing in the collection of items and examples.  Tell the groups to keep their progress and "findings" secret; they are competing with the other groups to earn the most points.  This is very motivating for some children.  Encourage them to plan a strategy for gathering the examples of the words outside of school.  Every student is expected to contribute to the team effort.
 
Step 4.  Presentation Day:  Students are to bring their items to school.  Give the teams a few minutes to organize their objects in piles by word (items/examples for "water cycle" in one pile, items/examples for "hurricane" in another pile, etc.)  Have a large sheet of paper prepared for each word.  Show the first word page and have teams share what they found or know about the word from their reading and searching.  The teacher records their ideas on each word page.  These pages may be posted on the wall for use during the unit.

Step 5.  The teams sort their items/examples by type (books about the topics in one pile, pictures in another pile, models in another pile, etc.)  The students count up points in each pile, add them together, and calculate their total.

Step 6.  When the actual unit is taught, the teacher and students can refer to the posters for assistance.

For more about Activating Strategies for lessons and Launch Activities for units refer to Connecting Exemplary Practices in Acquistion Lessons and Planning Units for Learning.



The Flaw of Test Prep Workbooks

Cindy Riedl
Sep 28, 2009

The only way to assure that students retain the words they are exposed to is to see those words in their reading, hear them used in conversation and in their writing during writing to learn or to inform responses – over and over – in meaningful ways.  End of the week tests do not assure retention.  Even cumulative reviews will not  do it.  They simply extend the amount of time before the word is forgotten.  If they do not retain it, what is the point?  Using the SAT workbook approach to increasing vocabulary simply means that students are going through the motions, but the time is wasted because they do not retain the meaning of words long term.

So what can teachers do to prepare their students for the SATs? Take a look at what is offered when ‘SAT words’ are searched on the Internet!

“Each of the 10 word lists contains 100 important words.  Make a commitment to learn one list a week.  Go through each list and test yourself (or, better still, get a friend to test you) one week later to reinforce your learning.”
“Remember - work on vocabulary is never a waste of time.  It pays dividends in terms of your final SAT score, but more importantly, it makes you a more educated person.”

Think again!  The rule is - if you do not use the words, you lose the words! The question is why are we not teaching these words throughout the junior and senior years?  Why are we waiting to cram them in during a short period of time?  If they make an individual a more educated person, why are we not integrating them in every course of study during middle and high school? Some of those words could apply to intermediate grades.  What is wrong with this picture?  SAT workbooks have been a practice since the arrival of the tests – yet no one has a clue why students fail to retain the words they have been practicing in isolation.

Why? The explanation is so simple that it is actually painful to recognize its reality!  What is worse – many teachers continue to beat this ‘dead horse’ because they have always done it that way or find it overwhelming to make sure that during junior and senior high these words are gradually introduced in all content areas where a natural fit exists.  Instead, hundreds of words are being rehearsed in isolation without a context using the workbook experience and no attempt is being made to create meaningful connections to what students already know.  The mind needs to organize and categorize as it makes meaning of new words.  Also, to retain these words, a method of transfer to long term memory is required where rich understandings are cultivated and relationships to other words are created.  For information to reach long term memory it requires multiple meaningful exposures to new words that are then applied consistently in writing and speaking.  Teachers need to use these words in their conversations and during instruction making connections more meaningful – in other words – model, model, model the language of the educated.  Those words need to become second nature to how we express ourselves to students during basic conversations and during instruction.  Furthermore, students need to be encouraged to use these words and are rewarded when they do.

Thinking that these words will occur naturally during exposure to a variety of literature has limited support.  “Incidental word learning during wide reading is highly overrated and not sufficient to enhance the vocabulary development of students especially when more than 90 percent of words students encounter in their reading occur less than once in a million words of text.” (Nagy & Anderson, 1984)

“One of the most useful findings from Jenkins’ study (1984) is that even superficial instruction on words greatly enhances the probability that students will learn the words from context when they encounter them in their reading.  When students receive direct instruction on words, their ability to comprehend these new words increases by a factor of about one-third.” (Classroom Instruction That Works, Marzano, Pickering and Pollack, 2001)

Also, according to Powell (1980), one of the best ways to learn a new word is to associate the word with an image.  This rarely happens when students are independently assigned a list of words and tasks in a SAT workbook.

And, there rests the challenge!  How do teachers provide meaningful vocabulary instruction on the increasing number of words that might appear during the SATs?  Again – why wait until the crunch of high school to begin addressing these words?  Would it not be more productive to do a school wide study to determine which words could be taught gradually with a natural fit to the different subject areas?  Teachers from all courses of study should play a role in this responsibility, not just the English department.  Consider the adjective, ostensible, which means appearing as genuine or real.  Would it be possible to use this word in the study of Ancient History when referring to artifacts of a time period and then making the connection to the behavior of seniors?  An excellent reference for teachers that can help students develop their talents of association with imagery is Vocabulary Cartoons I & II, SAT Word Power (Building an Educated Vocabulary with Sight and Sound Memory Aids) by New Monic Books.  This publication will help the teacher or learner become more comfortable with the power of imagery and personal associations!

Furthermore, greater emphasis on teaching word parts, Greek and Latin roots, prefixes and suffixes, beginning as early as first grade, has tremendous impact on vocabulary and language development.  Knowledge of roots will give students a richer understanding of known words, clues to decipher unknown words, hints to help them learn new words quickly, memory joggers to recall nearly-forgotten words, and a grasp of how words are built.  Which is easier to learn, fifty roots or 100,000 new words? Instruction should tap into the fun of roots, so learning them should be fun too.  Once students learn some roots, they will start noticing them in the more challenging vocabulary words they encounter during their reading.

In conclusion, before the supplemental SAT vocabulary workbooks are trashed, it is important to involve staff in the planning of an alternative.  The cost of the workbooks is not the issue here.  The effectiveness of this stagnant rote method and the waste of time are the issues.  Novels and other selections being covered in English class with a focus on integrating recommended words often found on the SATs and using them during discourses and written responses in the classroom is only addressing the tip of the iceberg.  A comprehensive plan is needed where everyone on staff is involved with teaching and using the “vocabulary of the educated.”

“Being ticketed for running a red light is a mere peccadillo compared to driving while intoxicated”, exclaimed Mr. Warren to his students. “I concur,” responded a student. “Driving while intoxicated has become a pandemic on weekends. But teachers should set a virtuous example and abide by the laws.”

Would this conversation happen in the average high school classroom?



Using the Standards Alignment Report in Power Curriculum

Bill Blynt
Sep 28, 2009

For those districts participating in a Power Curriculum workshop, the standards alignment report can be a big asset.  This report allows curriculum personnel, principals and teachers to track where each state standard is being addressed and the importance that standard has been assigned in a course curriculum.  This report provides a clear picture of how standards have been clustered into topics, identifies the priority attached to each standard and shows how the course developers have initially reviewed and determined if the standard reflects knowledge or a skill that must be taught to their students.

When reviewing the report it is important to understand that the report raises more questions than it provides answers.  The report helps a review team as it moves a course from draft status to implementation.  Questions raised by the report may have legitimate answers that can be justified based on factors identified by the course development team.  Things to look for as a team reviews the Standards Alignment Report include:

  • Standards identified as Essential that are not aligned to a topic or aligned to only one topic.
  • Standards identified as Compact that are aligned to multiple topics.
  • The percentage of Essential standards exceeds 50%, those identified as Important exceeds 30% or those identified as Compact exceeds 20%.
  • The designation of the standard as Know or Do does not accurately reflect the purpose of the standard.


A review of the report can be undertaken at a number of levels.  Reports can be generated for individual courses, at specific grade-levels, for a curriculum area K-12, or for an entire district.  The information can be extremely beneficial as districts compare their standards-driven course curriculum with state assessment performance data.  Adjusting courses is easily accomplished if a discrepancy is identified.  Using Toolbox, state standards can be re-assigned to topics or have their prioritization ranking changed based on the finding of a curriculum review or data analysis.

The Standards Alignment Report is a very useful tool.  It can be easily generated by going to the Tools tab in Toolbox.  The seventh entry in the drop-down screen provides you access to your district report.

Interested in Power Curriculum for your district?  Contact Client Services at 866-955-3276 or info@LEARNINGFOCUSED.com.