Framing Our Reading | Part 4: Vocabulary and Concept Development

            This week, instead of choosing a reading strategy, my partner and I were tasked with choosing a strategy that we would use to teach students vocabulary related to the readings from the three previous weeks. The three vocabulary words that Jennie and I chose to use were “gene,” “stem cell,” and “cones.” We chose these words because they were central to the themes of our articles and because they were broad enough to lend themselves to graphic organizer vocabulary development strategies.

            When teaching vocabulary to students, the classic approach has been to provide students with vocabulary lists that consist of only words and definitions. Anderson and Nagy (1993) identify that vocabulary instruction is more successful when students develop an interest in learning the meanings of words and are given practice analyzing the vocabulary words. Using graphic organizers as part of vocabulary construction can provide a more meaningful vocabulary learning experience for students because they provide a visual for students, aiding in memory (McLaughlin, 2015).

            There are many graphic organizers to choose from when developing a plan for teaching students vocabulary. For my activity, I chose to use the Semantic Question Map from the McLaughlin (2015) text. This graphic organizer centers around the vocabulary and then branches out into separate questions about the word that can be raised by the teacher or the student. Then, boxes extend from the questions that display the answers. This graphic organizer is particularly interesting because it asks questions of students and guides their thinking (McLaughlin, 2015). These questions encourage the curiosity about words that contribute to word consciousness (Anderson & Nagy, 1993).

            When using this strategy in the classroom, I would probably initially start by providing students with the questions to help them learn to use the semantic question map. I would also most likely lead a class discussion in order to demonstrate how the map should be filled out. After sufficient practice with this type of graphic organizer, however, I would eventually have students generate some of their own questions in order to determine which aspects of the concept are most important for them to analyze and understand.

            For the three semantic question maps that I created, I did ask the question “What is the definition?” As Anderson & Nagy (1993) admit, definitions do have an important place in vocabulary instruction. It seems like students would be more likely to get confused if they were learning new terms and were not given the opportunity to link it with a concrete definition. The other questions that I generated were based around other concepts that were associated with the term and ways that the term can be connected to the real world. See the bottom of this blog post for my completed semantic question maps for the terms “gene,” “stem cell,” and “cones.”

            My partner, Jennie, used a different type of graphic organizer to demonstrate these new vocabulary words. Visit her blog at http://teachlearnexplore2016.blogspot.com/ to read more about her strategy. 

References

Anderson, R.C. and Nagy, W.E. (1992).  The vocabulary conundrum.  American Educator, 16, 14-18, 44-47.

McLaughlin, M., (2015).  Content Area Reading:  Teaching and Learning in an Age of Multiple Literacies.  Boston:  Pearson.