Competency 11: Vocabulary, Academic Language, and Background Knowledge: Instruction and Assessment

RICA Reflection

Competency 11: Vocabulary, Academic Language, and Background Knowledge: Instruction and Assessment

Introduction

RICA Competency number eleven address how to teach and assess vocabulary.

Personal Connection/Evidence

There are a many ways that I have engaged with this competency.

Instruction must fit the age and ability of the students is something that I am conscious of when I was planning and writing my lesson plans. I had to make sure that what I had planned was going to be at the right level for all of my students and fit all of their needs. In my science lesson, I thought that my fifth graders would be able to complete a data table and it turns out that they were in more need of guidance. I had to change the amount of time for the other parts in order to meet their needs. Some of the other parts that I had to help with was making the vocabulary a little more kid friendly versus being so scientific.

Semantic maps will be used in my future classroom. I have seen these types of maps being used in my first grade class and they are very important to teach vocabulary and helps to organize the thoughts of the students. My class did a semantic map of plants. The students helped the teacher figure out what a plant needs in order to survive. I loved being able to have the students be able to make the connections to the material they just read to making a poster that connected the information.

“As with almost all types of lessons, struggling readers usually respond well to activities that use a variety of learning modes.” (p. 86) Applying the concept of kinesthetics to teaching verbs can go hand in hand. As a class we were discussing what verbs were and we decided to put motions with the words in order to make the concept become concrete. ex. the word is run, we ran around in a circle spelling run.

Meeting the Needs of All Learners

Struggling readers and students with reading disabilities will acquire vocabulary, knowledge of academic language, and background knowledge. The teacher will need to reteach what has not been mastered and may need to reteach the lessons. By providing concrete examples this will help make the connections needed for master of concepts.

English Language Learners or speakers of nonstandard English will need to learn cognates. Working on connecting the Spanish to the English word will help the students be able to make the connections faster. Helping the students understand the different morphemes that will help them in their future. By teaching concepts such as: anti- means against, auto means self, bi- means two, and contra- means against, this will help increase the knowledge needed for competency.  More information about cognates

Advanced learners will need to have the pace or complexity increased and extending the depth and breadth of instruction.

Assessment

There are several ways in which to assess the students to find out if they are progressing. Using a word in a sentence/multiple answer options format is the best and most concrete way to assess for knowledge of word meaning. Asking students to identify and explain the meaning of a word by using a synonym. Analogies are another way in which to assess for understanding. Through the use of context  a teacher can assess through morphemic analysis this is teaching the students prefixes, suffixes, root words, and compound words. Lastly, figuring out if the student understands language structure, this is when you remove a word in a paragraph and the student is able to decipher the missing word based on sentence structure.

There are also entry-level, progress-monitoring, and summative assessments. Entry-level, progress-monitoring, and summative assessments are assessments that the teacher will administer when needed to check progress along the way. If the student is below grade level the teacher will need to figure out why. The teacher may have to go back to kindergarten levels to recheck the students skill level and move on from there to see where the problem is.

Text-to-Text Connections

“Semantic mapping, or webbing, is a strategy that shows readers and writers how to organize important information. Semantic mapping can also revolve around vocabulary learning by providing a visual display of how words are related to other words.” (RLTR, p. 266)

“Teaching vocabulary words with games should not be “played” in isolation. Games should be connected to learning objectives and adapted to include the word being learned or reinforced. In order for that vocabulary development to truly occur, the focus needs to be on word knowledge rather than word pronunciation.” (RLTR, p. 276)

TPE Connections

TPE 2: Monitoring Student Learning During Instruction

TPE 3: Interpretation and Use of Assessments

TPE 4: Making Content Accessible

TPE 5: Student Engagement