My family and I talk and talk. There are very few times in
the day when we don’t talk. The conversation ranges from probing questions
about the nature of fairies and their purpose in the delicate harmony of the
universe to wondering if our house will be hit by lightning one day. Sometimes,
there is a small conversation that gets me thinking. One such conversation was
over fears. One of my daughters has a fear of her hair falling out – she doesn’t
have to worry about that happening. The other daughter realised this was a bit
of a crazy thing to worry about. In my attempt, to reassure my daughter, I
introduced the idea of rational and irrational fears. They got the idea and
then we explored this in more detail. Are there other types of fears, dad? By
the end of the conversation, we had discussed rational and irrational fears,
phobias, different types of phobia, stress, worry, anxiety. Oh, and she still
worried about her hair falling out! My daughters, in the space of fifteen minutes,
had learnt a new set of words to describe fear and worries.
The interesting thing for me was how we moved from one
word to another rather than explore one word in great detail. My approach to
vocabulary has always been, I think, traditional. If there is a word students don’t
know in the text, I do the following things:
1: Ask if a student know what it means.
2: Ask students to see if they can work it out from the
context of the extract.
3: Ask students to see if it looks like another word.
Then, I’d tell them what the word means. If I have a little
bit of background knowledge of the word, I’d might dazzle students with the
origin of the word, or how the meaning of the word changed due a historical
event. I often repeat the pattern in my lessons. I find defining a word becomes
my verbal digression in a lesson. Depending on the text we are usually studying,
I might give students a glossary. And, this is the problem, I think it is
limiting. The whole approach is based on learning one word at a time and on
that basis we might be learning six or seven words a week in lessons. I get the
principle: it is better to learn one thing really well than several things
badly. However, is that really how we learn words best? Does the spending of
twenty plus minutes really embed or enlarge a student’s vocabulary?
Take the word ‘gingerly’. It is the adverb / adjective
(depending on context) that I often have students use in their writing. I think
there is a whole primary school lesson devoted to it, but students tend to use
it with aplomb, when it comes to creative writing. There is no doubt about the
effective learning of the word and its use, but it isn’t a very useful word –
just my opinion. The context for using it is fairly limited. I have read
millions of students’ work and I see it crop up only when a character is
nervously walking. The context taught has limited the student’s understanding
of the vocabulary. They know that if they use the word ‘gingerly’ instead of
‘slowly’ it is better. They don’t see how the word could be used in different
contexts. For example:
Character X gingerly accepts the friendship of Y in the
novel.
Therefore, I think the way we approach vocabulary can be
limiting and hinder understanding. To fix this, we could explore the different
ways to use the new word. However, again this could be limiting if you
understand how we learn to speak in the first place.
Anybody who has taught child language acquisition or who has
raised children will know the rate at which a child learns new vocabulary is
phenomenal. Research shows us that children aged 6-8 learn between six and
seven words a day and children aged 8-12 learn approximately twelve words a
day. If we apply a bit of logic to this idea, a teenager (12-16) should be
learning twenty four words a day. Now, they might be learning through reading
and other stuff that happens during a school day, but do we support this and
develop this. I don’t think I have; I have actually been working against
this. I have been teaching vocabulary
like a snail or as if students were six or seven – one or two words a lesson. Maybe,
I need to be quicker and faster. Or, perhaps, I need to think of vocabulary in
a different way.
Take MFL departments. They love their vocabulary. They are
experts at teaching new vocabulary to students and, I think, they have the
right approach. I think any MFL department will be able to give you a good
indication of how quickly students can retain new words. They compartmentalise
words according to topics. They will teach students vocabulary associated with
hobbies, shopping or parts of the body. But, what is interesting about the vocabulary
choices, is that they are variations of the same theme. They all fit the same
context. Students are learning the vocabulary for weather so they can describe
the different types of weather. Students learn how to say it is raining and to
say it is sunny. They are probably using the same phrase but they are subtly,
or not subtly, changing the meaning of the phrase with their choice of words. That
is how children learn language. They
learn the word and then the different meanings or possibilities of that word
when they get it wrong.
What if we adopted the methodology used by MFL departments? What
if we compartmentalise vocabulary and taught groups of words or words with
similar meanings, but with slight differences? All too often, we tend to load
students up with tier 2, 3 or higher words, if such a thing exists. Here are
some ‘WOW’ words or words an A* will use so use them in your writing. What if
we developed a student’s vocabulary through association and links with other
words? When I select a word, when I am writing, I will think about all the
possibilities and select the best one for the job. I might, for example, weigh
up how one word creates a particular tone better than another. In my head, I have linked words together or I
have in a way compartmentalised them together. That’s why I can think of twenty
words to describe the temperature of a room as being cold. Or, fifty words to
describe a hangover.
At the moment, I am planning for next term and especially
homework. I think revising and learning the meanings of words should be a
regular pattern. Surprisingly, a weekly department wide spelling test has been
very successful. Why? Because, it forms patterns of learning. The regular
pattern of learning has helped us, as teachers, to be organised but it also has
helped the students form regular habits in their learning. As a result of this
approach, I want to expand what we do to learning vocabulary. Twice a term
students are going to be given a set of words like this.
Secluded:
Sheltered or hidden from view
A V
|
Isolated:
Separated from other persons or things
A V N
|
Desolated:
Deprived of inhabitants
A V N
|
Solitude:
Living alone
N
|
Confined:
To shut up or keep in
V
|
Reclusive:
A person who lives on their own, usually for religious reasons
N
|
Rootless:
Having no place in society
A
|
Alienation:
Being an outsider or the feeling of being an isolated by society
N
|
Withdrawal:
The act of retreating or removing a person from society
N
|
Quarantine
Isolation is enforced by the government
N V
|
Privacy:
Being away from people or hidden from view
N
|
Insular:
Detached or standing alone
N
|
Aloof:
Having different feelings to others or not sharing feelings with
others
A Av
|
Retreat:
Withdrawing for safety or privacy
N V
|
Segregation:
Separating one part of society from another
N
|
Concealment:
A way or place of hiding
N
|
Sanctuary:
A place of safety
N
|
Detachment:
The act of separating
N
|
Partition:
Something that separates two things
N
|
Disengage:
To free a person from
something
V
|
The groups of words are going to be linked by a theme or an
aspect. The one above is for loneliness and it is for Year 10s as they study ‘A
Christmas Carol’. I am also looking to doing the following:
·
Year 7 – Animal Farm – Power
·
Year 8 – Macbeth – Madness
·
Year 9 – Lord of the Flies – Savagery
The students will have a lesson on the words. In that
lesson, we will explore the differences between each one. We might even draw a
picture to represent what each word means. Then, the students have a week to
learn the meanings of each one. During the week, we will have a quick test on
them and relate to ongoing work in the lesson. Finally, students will have a
test (multiple choice) on the meanings of each word. At each stage and interim
lesson, students will be guided to use them in their own discussions and
writing.
The plan is to have an ongoing focus on vocabulary rather
than an ‘odd word here or there’ approach. I do intend to keep helping students
to learn words, but it is to be hoped that this approach will make a more logical
and sensible approach. I am teaching new vocabulary but presenting it in a way
that might help students better with retaining that information. We want
students to regularly learn new words, but I have always struggled with the
idea of word banks. This way students are looking at learning words in a
meaningful way and not a random selection of words. It is to be hoped that we
will have a bank of words at the end of the year so we can recycle them or
repeat them in future years.
The above example given helps to understand ‘A Christmas
Carol’ better. The theme of loneliness is a regular theme in the novel, but
often the problem students have is defining loneliness. By providing students
with these banks to learn, I am making them build mental lists around a
concept. But, this time around I am making them explicit. For the next set of
words, I might look at greed. All too often in the past students have repeated
the word loneliness when trying to explain the theme. Take some of the words and
there meanings is clearer. Scrooge’s behaviour is a way for him to partition
himself from others and increase his segregation from society. Teaching
students to see that there are different meanings and words attached to one
idea helps to open up a different level of understanding. Without the word or
idea, students struggle to form meaningful points. The big difference between
the most able students and other students is often their vocabulary, but how
they use their vocabulary.
Going back to the conversation about fear with my daughters.
What surprised me the most was the snowball (seasonal reference) effect of the vocabulary.
Understanding that there were subtle differences between words helped them
understand difficult or abstract ideas. For them, knowing what is a rational
and an irrational helped them to categorise fears. Knowing the difference
between a worry, fear and a phobia helped them to see how scared a person is of
something. I have always though that teaching students new words was a case of
chucking a load of new words and hoping that something will stick. This idea of
exploring twenty alternatives or nuances of the same words actually makes more
sense. Link from the start.
The great thing about resourcing this is that all you need
is a one little book: a thesaurus.
Thanks for reading,
Xris
