ThE MOst DisJoiNteD bLoG pOSt EvEr! (and some affixes!)

This really is probably going to be the most disjointed blog post ever! There were a few different education and non-education topics swirling around in my head, and I'm just going to lump them all into one post.

I haven't blogged in a bit for no good reason than it is summer, and I'm being a bit lazy.  

Every morning, this is the plan:

                                        

But, then I get distracted.  One of my biggest distractions this summer has been this little app:

Yes, that devilish little Kindle app on my iPhone!  It has been so nice to have time to read fluff.  I am still in the middle of two different professional books, but I just lost interest for a bit.  I might need to delete this app for a couple of weeks so I can get something done! Like blogging and working on my TpT stuff.

Figuring out this whole Tpt thing was is one of my goals this summer.  I have some things I want to get done, but the time-suck that is my Kindle app has been getting the best of me.  It was so fun seeing all the pics of bloggers who attended the Tpt gathering (convention?) in Vegas last week.  It looked like so much fun.  I've been reading lots of blog posts on it, and I have yet to hear of anyone that didn't have a great time, meet some amazing bloggers, and learn lots of helpful tips.

In fact, I posted this pic on my Instagram account during the festivities.  More on Instagram later!  My goal is that by next year my Tpt store will be up and running and I will attend the next gathering  

One thing I am getting done is summer school.  I have the best group of kids this year!  I truly love them to pieces.  They are so sweet, just really nice children who are willing to learn.  No attitudes!  They really make heading to work on nice, sunny, beach days not so bad. And, there are only 7 of them which has let me get so much done.

  My summer friends will be entering 4th grade in September but have reading levels 1-2 years below that.  One thing I learned right away is that they are unfamiliar with the most basic of affixes.  I know they were taught them in 3rd grade, but the recall is not there at all.  So, when deciding what to do with them for word study this summer, affixes it is!  I wanted to get the most bang for my buck.  They certainly need help with spelling patterns, but as soon-to-be-4th-graders I feel mastering some basic affixes will help them more with decoding the grade level words they will encounter.

For visuals with my lessons, I've been using this beach themed packet of 31 different prefixes and suffixes by Rachael Parlett that I found on Teachers Pay Teachers.  It is awesome. And, free! She actually has this same pack available in different themes (pirates, jungle, Hollywood, and more) along with other for sale resources that compliment them.  We've been doing one a day.

 I write the affix down, and then I give the kids a basic word that has that affix.  I then let them try to figure out what it means.  Once they do, we write the definition on the chart we've glued in our notebook.  We then work together to brainstorm a list of words.  After that, they select a word and use it in a sentence that shows they know the meaning of the word.  Finally, they sketch a quick picture showing their sentence.  This form is another freebie I also found on Teachers Pay Teachers created by Gaily Girl.  It's a pack of various materials, including this chart/organizer.  I will say that I did tweak it a bit, but it is essentially the same.  I just changed the font, made one line dotted, and changed the center box to put in the particular affixes we are using.  The form is editable, so it was easy to do.

 I only have my friends for five short weeks this summer, so we are spending two weeks on prefixes, two on suffixes (there they are below, ready to go!) and on our last week we will be combining the two.  The best part of it all is that I can really see this clicking for the kids.  They are using the new words they learned in our conversation and have stopped me during our read aloud more than once to point out that I said a word that had a prefix we learned.  Score!!!

After summer school today, I went to my school to grab some materials from our supply room.  If you are not a teacher and wonder what schools look like during the summer, here it is!

I really feel for our custodians in the summer.  Our school is not air conditioned, and it is hot as blazes in that building.  They are busy clearing out the classrooms, stripping and freshly waxing floors, cleaning the rooms, making repairs, and actually working to retile some classrooms this year.  It is hot and sweaty work! They have to empty every room, do all that work, and then put it all back again.   But, it all very much appreciated when we come back to shiny, clean classrooms in September!

                                             

So, frozen peas.  Yup, that's me driving home from school last week with a bag of frozen peas on my knee.  At dismissal last Thursday, I tripped on some uneven sidewalk and did a full-on face plant (really more of a knee injury) in front of all the summer school staff, students, and parents.  It was so bad, I literally couldn't get up for a minute.  I was going to post a picture of my knee today, but it is so ugly I didn't want to subject you to it!  It is blue, green, purple, black, red, yellow, and every other color you can imagine.  I honestly can't believe how bad the bruise is.  It is still really sore, but I'm just glad I didn't break anything.  And to prove how sweet my kids are this summer, I can't begin to tell you how upset they got when I fell.  I was so busy reassuring them that I was fine that it wasn't until after they were all gone that I realized how bad it was.  

To keep on with this disjointed post. . .  I might be mildly obsessed with getting some Jamberry nails.  I'm seeing them all over the web.  When I first heard of them, I thought I could just pick them up in the store.  But, I think it is some kind of home party sales thing.  I do see though that I can order some on their website.  They aren't cheap, but I think it would be a fun treat. Have to look in to this some more!  Do any of you do Jamberry nails?  How do you like them?  Where do you get them?

My other mild obsession this summer has been banana frozen yogurt.  I tell you this for no reason other than I feel more people need to know about banana frozen yogurt.  (You know I'm an elementary school teacher because I can't even type the word banana without thinking of Minions and laughing!)  I posted this picture of some on Instagram a few days ago.  It was a bit disappointing due to the lack of toppings. Notice there aren't really any?  I wanted some fresh fruit, and there was none!  When is the last time you went to a fro yo shop that had no fresh fruit?!!  

Speaking of Instagram, I have just started using my blog Instagram.  I find I am much more of an Instagram person than a Facebook person.  I use FB in my personal life for friends and family, but I find it really difficult to switch back and forth between my blog FB page and my personal FB page.  As a result, I sort of don't pay any attention to my blog FB page which isn't good.  Some of you have been so nice to follow me on it which means you are probably on it more than I am!  However, I find it much easier to blend my personal and blog Instagram in one.  I think I'm more of a visual person and just find Instagram more appealing.  I need to add an Instagram link to my buttons up top, but you can find me HERE. I've only posted a few pics, but I think IG is one social media I will keep up with.

So, that's my disjointed post. Which seems about right for summer blogging! :-)

Vocabulary Instruction

I've been reading up on vocabulary instruction the past few months.  Vocabulary has been a concern for me this year as I notice more and more that my friends definitely need to expand theirs. It is something that my district is actually working on now to help our students across the board.

From my grad school classes, I knew a lot about vocab but wanted to read some more current work.  Earlier this week, I noticed a book had been added to a resource shelf in my school that I had actually read a couple of months ago.  It is Vocabulary for the Common Core by Robert J. Marzano and Julia A. Simms.  You can't really talk about vocabulary without having read some Marzano!

I have to say, I really like this book.  It is not so bogged down with technical terminology that your eyes cross after a while.  It's actually an easy read that is straight to the point with data to support their theories.  So, what follows is my take on what I read.  Your interpretation may vary!  Of course, I can't include everything the book covers, but I will try to highlight some of the key parts in each section.

The book is divided into three parts.  The first part has four short chapters and discusses the importance of vocabulary instruction, gives a six-step process for instruction, explains the hierarchy of words from the common core, and tells how to build a vocabulary program for an individual teacher or a school-wide program.  I am going to spend some time on Part 1 and just mention a thing or two about Parts 2 and 3.

I should note now, if you don't have a real interest in vocabulary instruction, you may find this all a bit blah, blah, blah. It is kind of long and all vocab, all the time! No hard feelings!  I get it!

Part 1: Vocabulary Instruction for the Common Core Standards

Chapter 1: The Importance of Vocabulary

This chapter goes into great detail discussing the importance and relevance of a student's oral vocabulary experiences to future vocabulary acquisition. It is amazing how significant the vocabulary gap is related to socio-economic status and how often parents speak to their children.  It creates a "cumulative disadvantage (p.7)" where this deficit of early oral language experience affects a child's ability to acquire new vocabulary in the long term.  There is data to support significant differences in vocabulary size and IQ at age 3 between children from professional families with frequent parent conversation and children from low socio-economic families with much lower parent conversation.  This isn't something we as teachers can control, so it seems to make the case for the importance of vocabulary instruction as a regular part of the school day.

Another interesting point was how having a larger vocabulary enables children (us!) to make mental categories of related words, which in turn allows higher level thinking where students note nuances in word.  This creates word choice that is more exact, expressive, and appropriate.   

The chapter ends with data supporting direct vocabulary instruction to percentile gains in assessments.  The key to this is that it doesn't support random vocabulary instruction, but the importance of "direct instruction about a targeted set of vocabulary terms. (p. 11)"  I'll come back to this point later because it is important.

Chapter 2:  A Six-Step Process for Vocabulary Instruction

This was a really interesting chapter, but one of the main points I LOVED is the difference between definition and description. I was literally saying, "Yes!" again and again as I read. Essentially it makes the point that sending children to the dictionary for a definition is often one of the least effective ways of teaching word meaning.  Yes! It is! I have always believed this. How many times have you had to explain a definition because the definition itself contains unknown words or is not relevant enough to be clear to your friends?  So, you say, "Well, it's LIKE this. . . " or, "It's WHEN. . ."  We define words by explaining and giving examples.  That is how our students usually come to understand definitions. I'm not saying the dictionary is bad at all, but it can't be the be all and end all of defining words. As noted in the book, the goal of the dictionary people is to define that term in the most succinct way they can to preserve room. They are not necessarily trying to provide the most easily understood definition or provide multiple examples to clarify meaning. This is why giving students a list of words to look up is so ineffective if we leave it at that.

The chapter focuses on a six-step process of direct vocabulary instruction with examples of how to do each step and suggested activities.  I would bet that most of us have done all the parts of this process at some point but not necessarily as part of a six-step plan of direct instruction. I think the biggest caveat to the whole process is finding the instructional time to do it all. It is well worth the time, but there is so much more we have to teach.  You would need to look at your literacy instruction time and see how it might fit.  Or, see how you can modify it to fit. My opinion is doing some of it is better than doing none of it!

Chapter 3: Vocabulary Terms From the Common Core State Standards

Oh, the common core!  It is everywhere!  Marzano and Simms review Isabel Beck's 3 Tiers of Vocabulary.  If you aren't familiar with them, THIS LINK will take you to a short Power Point created by Beck and her colleagues which explains it and provides information on vocab instruction with ELL students.  Essentially, Tier 1 words are the common words we all know: chair, dog, table, pretty, etc.  Tier 2 words are not so common in every day language, but we encounter them through experience and  in text and they become part of our language.  Tier 3 words tend to be content specific and used only in the context of the particular content, think science terms, math vocabulary, etc.  Essentially, this chapter explains how the word lists in Part 2 (tier 2 words) and Part 3 (tier 3 words) were selected.  They were words that came from the common core standards themselves and words previously identified by Marzano.  The book goes on to explain the hows and whys of the selection process.

Chapter 4: Building a Vocabulary Program

This was a very informative chapter if you are looking for a way to begin. This is where you create that "targeted set of vocabulary terms" mentioned in chapter 1. It provides a three-step process for individual teachers and a six-step process for schools/districts to use when selecting words for vocab instruction.   These are the word lists you would use in the six-step instructional model explained in chapter 2.

If I could identify one point from this chapter as significant, for me it would be the fact that teachers can, on their own, use the process described to select terms to teach, but "school or district wide vocabulary programs can be even more powerful. (p. 51)"  This is what I hope to see in my school.  Marzano does a great job of explaining how schools can form a committee to create a systematic word instruction model very simply.  It just makes so much sense to me to do it this way rather than have every teacher teach words they think are important with no correlation between grade levels and content. Marzano acknowledges that we can't teach all the words, and encourages the reader to select terms that are most relevant for them.  He even provides a ratings scale to use so that all member of a committee can rank words to really determine which they feel are most important in a more objective manner. This takes us to the last two parts of the book.

Part 2: Tier 2 Vocabulary Terms From The Common Core State Standards
This is literally a selection of words from the common core that are organized by the kinds of words they are (too much to explain here, but if you read the book you will know what I mean.) They are not categorized by grade level simply because they can appear at many different grade levels as they are those Tier 2 words that students may or may not be familiar with at different ages based on their word experiences.

Remember when I wrote about providing students with descriptions as well as definitions when defining words? Well,what I like about this section is that for each word it provides a math and language arts based description that the teacher can use when explaining a word.  This is where the nuances of words comes into play.  The connotation we have for a word in a math context may be very different for the connotation we have for the same word in a literacy context.

Part 3: Tier 3 Vocabulary Terms From The Common Core State Standards
Another list.  This time, they are those content specific tier 3 words.  Marzano took the standards and pulled related vocabulary that students need to know.  They are listed in a chart by the strands of the standards.  There is also a matrix that spans three grade levels for each word; suggested grade levels (based on the standards) for what grade the word should be introduced, practiced, and mastered.  It is an amazing list of common core words that bring order to all the academic vocabulary we need to teach.

Overall, this is a good book.  I think it is particularly useful if you want to bump up your vocabulary instruction but don't know where to start.  The lists in Part 3 are amazingly helpful if you are wondering what academic vocab you should be covering at your particular grade level. The six-step process for instruction is awesome but also time consuming. You would really have to think about how to make it work for you.  The book is not a hard read and can be read relatively quickly.  Of the 266 pages, the first 54 are essentially all of the text.  The rest of the book is almost all word lists.

I have to say, I read the heck out of this book!  If ever I needed an example of a book to show my students how to stop and jot when reading or do a close read, this book would be a perfect choice. I think it comes from being a lit major in college.  I feel like I tend to write more notes (and arrows and asterisks) than the author does text sometimes!

             

As I'm still knee deep in vocabulary thoughts, the book I'm currently reading is Bringing Words to Life: Robust Vocabulary Instruction by (who else?) Isabel Beck, Margaret McDeown, and Linda Kucan.

This was first published in 2002 but had been revised in 2013.  I vaguely remember reading it years ago but have forgotten enough to want to read the revised edition.  This one is slower reading, so it may be a bit before I can post about it.

So, that's where I have had my nose buried lately.  Brushing up on vocab. Do you have a specific model for vocab instruction in your school? What works for you?  I am planning on a follow-up post soon of some vocab silliness I always do with my friends that has always helped build vocab. Words can be fun!

Blurt!

Do you know the game Blurt!?  It is a great vocabulary game.  I'm going to tell you a bit about the game, then I'm going to tell you how I modified it to play with specific vocabulary and how to play without having the actual game.

Blurt! is a vocabulary game where your friends are given a definition.  The first person to call out the correct vocabulary word gets to move their playing piece that many spaces on the board.  The first person to go around the board once wins.  This is the game I have.  I picked it up at Goodwill over the summer for $1.99 thinking it would be a fun center activity for my friends.

I went online to see if the game was available, and it seems Amazon has a new edition of the game available.

Both editions come with a junior version for your younger friends and a more advanced version for your upper elementary friends. 

To play the regular version, you roll the dice and the reader reads the clue on that number. 1, 2, and 3 definitions are supposed to be easier than 4, 5, and 6.  However, I think it just depends on your schema.  Your friends then blurt out what they think the word is until someone gets it correct.  Here are a few of the cards from the older version of the game.  Sorry about the gaps between pictures, can't seem to get rid of them.

               

On the back of the cards are blue definitions.  This is for playing the junior version.  

 

The junior version is different in that the teacher reads the definition and your friends have to write the correct word rather than blurt it out loud.  If they get the correct word and it is spelled correctly, they move four spaces.  If they get the correct word but it's spelled incorrectly, they move three spaces.  Wrong word doesn't move.  To be honest, I've played it this way with my older friends and it works.

This is what the cards look like in the newer version.  I think one side is regular version and the other is junior version as in the older game, but it looks like there are three levels of difficulty now rather than two.

I can tell you that after playing the game for just a few minutes in class, I could easily tell who had a large vocabulary and who didn't.  It was also very interesting to hear the words they blurted out.  I don't think they realized how many synonyms they knew for different words.

So, you know I can't leave well enough alone. I had to figure out how to modify this game for my friends.

Instead of using the cards provided, I took the vocabulary words we have used to date and made our own cards.  Actually, I have Word documents with vocabulary for different subjects saved.  I just printed those out and cut them into strips, and we used those.  I put half in a jar for 1, 2, 3 and the other half in a jar for 4, 5, and 6.  This allowed my friends to review, even preview, some vocab they need them to know.

I've also taken the concept of the game to teach word choice.  We randomly picked a card and wrote down all the words my friends blurted out.  As I noted earlier, they are really surprised at the number of synonyms they know for words.  We then talked about which were stronger for writing and which words fit certain situations better.  I did it for about four words.  Just the fact that they got to yell out words got them immediately engaged.  There are also more options in the directions for things like Challenges and Takeovers, but I'm just sort of giving you the basics here.

Then, I started to think about how to play if you didn't have the game board or just didn't want to drag it out.  The game board is essentially a square of squares.  Yeah, that makes sense!  Check out the picture.

You could easily just use a paper with squares or another game board you may have.  Or, you could play without a board.  Just roll a die and whoever gets the word correct gets that many points.  Set a point goal and whoever reaches it wins.  If you use your own vocab words, you wouldn't need the game at all.

However, I do recommend this game.  It is a lot of fun.  I even had two parents contact me earlier this month asking where I got it because two of my friends asked to get it for Christmas.  If that's not an endorsement, I don't know what is!  I would issue one warning.  I originally bought the game thinking it would be good for a center activity.  Not so much.  Blurt! can get a little loud.  It seems to inspire some very enthusiastic play!  However, if you have them write the word as in the junior version, it will work as a center activity just fine.

By the way, the Blurt! people have no idea I'm reviewing this game.  It is just my thoughts on a fun and educational game.  I wanted to post about it because I'm always looking for educational games that are worth playing.  Many times educational equals boring, and my friends hate the game.  In this case, educational equals fun and they love it!   So, what do you think of Blurt!?

Update 2/16/14:  I came across another blogger, Jen at Hello Mrs. Sykes, that wrote a great blog post about Blurt! Check out her awesome blog for her take on the game. :-)