Vocabulary thinking skills for all content areas

Here's a great quote from Janet Allen that explains why vocabulary research and development make a difference for students in all content areas.

The Reading Club thinks vocabulary graphic organizers are excellent tools to help all students improve the thinking skills found at the critical/independent level of Benjamin Bloom's taxonomy. 

Please try and use a vocabulary graphic organizer by April 15 and then complete a brief evaluation of the activity.  The Reading Club will post teachers' experiences so we can all gain knowledge and insight in helping our students better comprehend content in all areas.

Let the Reading Club know if you have any questions: Haupt, Kleine, Schlump, Harris, Carson, Brandt

Professional Development: Vocabulary

"Students need strategies they can use, not words they can memorize." - Jim Burke from his book, Reading Reminders: Tools Tips and Techniques

Please bring 5 vocabulary words, your students will discover before June, to Friday's professional development opportunity.  We will experience and apply various vocabulary strategies to these words.  The goal will be to discuss strategies that lend themselves to the learning goal for the unit or daily lesson using those words.


"Students cannot read what they don't understand."  Jim Burke, Reading Reminders: Tools Tips and Techniques

"'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in a rather scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less.'"  Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass

"Knowing what didn't work was easy.  Finding and reading the research related to word knowledge was also not very difficult.   Knowing how to implement that research in effective interesting ways turned out to be the hard part." Baumann and Kameenui. "Research on Vocabulary Instruction: Ode to Voltaire."

"According to some researchers (Baumann and Kameenui 1991) students in grades three totwelve acquire an average of threee thousand new words each year through osmosis or the context that their studies provides." Jim Burke, The English Teacher's Companion

Janet Allen's book, Words, Words, Words can be used in all content areas.  It's a great resource and best of all it's free.  In fact, my cousin Posterous, would chuckle if he knew I was including the link to the book.  Check it out and give it a read if you are looking for strategies to strengthen vocabulary learning.

Reading Strategy Overload?

Sorry about the dearth of Reading Club posts.   My cousin, Posterious has been putting me to shame lately.  However, shame can be a great motivator.  At any rate, there is a great article in the March 2011 issue of Educational Leadership, entitled, "Let Strategies Serve Literature."  Our library subscribes to the magazine and I've placed a copy on the faculty bulletin board for your perusal.

March 2011 | Volume 68 | Number 6
What Students Need to Learn    Pages 52-56

Let Strategies Serve Literature

Diana Senechal

Reading strategies are helpful guides—but we should keep students' attention on the literature.

Suppose someone tells you that the way to peel a fruit is to break the stem and pull away the skin. You find that this works well with bananas and you adjust it for oranges. Then you discover that it doesn't work with apples; you need a paring instrument, or perhaps you need not peel it at all. The skin is scrumptious, as it turns out. With melons, you hit a new obstacle. You can't peel them or bite into them; they must be cut open. But it's worth it— especially for cantaloupes! When you come to pomegranates, the original method slips your mind in your eagerness to try the fruit—look at those dark gems, those rivulets of red.

Eventually, you develop methods of getting into any fruit that depend on what you know and what you can intuit. The original strategy applied to a few fruits only—which is fine because it wasn't a grand theory, just a means to the fruit itself.

...Over the past few decades, a scenario like the latter has become a common way for many students to partake of literature...Reading strategies, taugth carefully, can help readers make sense of literature. But when the literature is subordinated to strategies...

Truly, it's a compelling read about the need for using reading strategies effectively.  Look it over when you get a chance and post a reaction or two here.