Active Vocab Learning

Celebrating Hispanic & Latinx Heritage Month

This project is a part of the Hispanic & Latinx Heritage Month celebration because it supports a Latino teacher or a school where the majority of students are Latino.

I teach math, science, and social studies to 6th grade students who are an average of two grade levels behind in their reading and writing skills. In addition, a number of them are learning English as their second language. Unfortunately, our textbooks are geared toward students that are grade level primary english speaker learners with regard to their reading and writing skills. This means that a good deal of the written material in the course is lost on my students, since they lack the necessary vocabulary to understand the text. Even the glossaries in the textbook use vocabulary that is above my students' level, which leaves them with no readily accessible resource for their numerous vocabulary questions. I envision having a children's dictionary underneath each chair, readily accessible to students, so that they can tackle vocabulary as they go. I see the following advantages to this setup: 1. Students can increase the expansion rate of their vocabulary as they work with the definitions of words in context 2. Students can avoid the embarassment that many of them feel when they need to admit that they don't know a word in front of their classmates. 3. Students can develop the skill of self-led learning that they will need in their future academic careers and beyond. 4. Lessons will flow more smoothly and maintain student engagement when students have the resources to answer questions on their own. 5. These dictionaries can also be explicitly integrated into lesson plans, asking students to practice their reading skills while working with content-oriented material. After consulting some reviews and speaking with our school librarian, I have decided upon the Webster's New World Children's Dictionary. Not only does this book seem most appropriate to the level of words that my students will be looking up, but it also provides a large number of illustrations and example sentences, which will help students internalize vocabulary more easily. Funding this proposal will not sponsor a day of learning or a even a finite amount of knowledge, but will instill language and study skills in students that will be valuable for a lifetime. Thank you.