Tag Archives: literacy
Making Our Writing “Mind Ready” by Annie Murphy Paul was originally posted on The Brilliant Blog. I found this fascinating (and as a writer who labors over her prose, a little dismaying): “Surprising new findings suggest an individual will remember a Facebook post longer than they’ll retain the memory of a sentence in a [...]
Before working at CompassLearning, I taught science to students in grades 5–9. I’ve worked in numerous schools, in both the public and private sectors, and taught students of varying socio-economic status and background. No matter where I was, it seemed that science teachers all struggled with the same thing: teaching content vocabulary in a meaningful and engaging way.
An example from the author’s article (see below to download), this hanging word wall is a powerful way for students to learn vocabulary essential to understanding new concepts in science.
Teaching vocab can be like pulling teeth, but research and experience have shown us that students who encounter too many unknown words lose the meaning of what was being read or heard. We also know they aren’t going to learn the meanings of symbiosis, liquefaction, and carbon dating from environmental print! We have to teach content vocabulary through explicit instruction if the rest of the lesson is going to make any sense. So, my science team and I got a little creative with an old standard. We incorporated word walls in a new and interactive way in our classrooms and watched our students become more engaged in the lessons and perform better on assessments.
Loading ...
