Summary- Professional Development/Vocabulary Instruction

Vocabulary is one of the most important aspects of education. Without vocabulary, there can be no literacy of any kind. Since literacy revolves around being able to effectively use the language specific to your topic, a vast vocabulary is needed to be able to effectively traverse through school. In order to develop a rich vocabulary, students must be exposed to multiple environments in which they would encounter these words. It goes beyond simply understanding what the word means; it requires being able to conjugate words into other parts of speech, connect them with words of similar meaning, and connect them with words of opposite meanings. In many cases, it will require that the student be able to show a physical representation of the abstract word that they are attempting to use. It may also require them to be able to break a word down into its root words in order to determine its meaning. Student vocabulary can be aided by putting students into a situation where they must use their own knowledge to speculate at what a word means. In literature circles, students can use each other to determine meanings of a word that they may not know. Students can use their vocabulary to evaluate multi-genre works, but also to write their own. Students who are subjected to a rich vocabulary, regardless of the content area, will be better able to grasp ideas that are presented to them.

            The websites associated with this article were really interesting. However, I must say that my favorite was Kelly Wilson’s fourth grade blog was my favorite. It was really amazing to see some of the things that her students accomplished. Furthermore, it was great to see how a class could be fully integrated with a blog. Having never really been involved with anything like this before, seeing another teacher’s success at integrating a blog into a class serves as a rubric for something that I may want to try in my classroom. I could definitely understand how something like this could be exciting for students. I think it would be fun to experiment to see if having a blog would increase students’ vocabulary skills. They could be required to make a post once a week using their vocabulary words. Doing something like this would allow students to comment on other students’ stories. I cannot wait to see how I can integrate this information into a classroom.