Words, Words, Words

The articles on words really emphasized the importance of being exposed to the same word in multiple contexts. If a child is going to acquire a rich understanding of a word they must really "know" the word. That totally makes sense! I really liked the Ten Important Words activity because it can be used in many different ways. The members of the class have the opportunity to talk about the important words that they chose, which encourages use of the words, understanding the meaning and content, and provides insight into their peers' perspectives about the text. The Ten Important Words Plus activity allows students to explore words even more in depth. I thought the idea of using different colored notecards for different tasks was a great add on to this activity. Students are asked to list synonyms and antonyms, or use the word in several sentences, or think of other forms of the original word. This encourages them to think about the relationship among words and across different contexts and can even help them relate words to their own experiences with them. This activity is a great way to expose words in multiple different contexts. The teacher could also have them draw definitions of the word, act the word out, or make maps or diagrams relating the word to other words. This activity also reminded me of the one we did in class when we had to pick one word to describe the articles we read and explain why it relates. This would help younger students learn how to summarize texts they read by teaching them to pull out the main words and ideas!