As I walk into Mr. Lee’s 6th grade classroom, hands are shooting up everywhere. “Ooh, Mr. Lee, I know! I know … my brother…”
Mr. Lee is smiling, letting the energy build; more students make connections. Looking at his board I see “ACCUSATION” written there and realize I’ve visited during a vocabulary experience. Now “accusation” was not a word in the suggested lesson development of the Teacher’s Edition, nor was it in the vocabulary sidebar of the students’ anthology text, but it was a key concept to the plot of the story they were about to read.
As a language arts department, we’d been trying to understand and utilize ideas of word consciousness; to bring more than just word meaning, we’ve been including activities and strategies that strengthen students’ awareness and range of word choice – we want them to see how words work. We don’t just teach the meaning of selected words from a list or a reading, we intentionally attempt to create experiences and connections and then to make students self-aware so they can transfer their learning (and their knowledge of how they learn) to new contexts.
So, as I walk into Mr. Lee’s room, he had just tried some suffix/word parts techniques with limited engagement results. But when he asked, “Have any of you ever had your brother or sister accuse you when you hadn’t even…” He got no farther when students’ “lights” clicked on … they connected… they suddenly saw the word and its meaning and hands shot up. Mr. Lee then made the next crucial step: he asked the class, “What happened?” The response I remember most clearly was a young (usually quiet) student who said, “I saw the little word in the big word.” So, it wasn’t a suffix, rather it was a “little word/big word” that this student needs to find in the future.
Seeing the grin on Mr. Lee’s face, feeling the energy of engagement from his students, was proof enough that our efforts to expand our understanding of vocabulary and enhancing students’ word consciousness were worth it. Vocabulary in Mr. Lee’s room truly was an experience.