On-the-Move #6
The strategy is Comparing word meaning as found in Intervention Strategies to Follow Informal Reading Inventory Assessment by JoAnne Schudt Caldwell and Lauren Leslie.
They stress the importance of helping students grow their vocabulary by keeping it grounded in what they are currently studying in context. Understanding how things are alike is a basic way we as learners handle new words, new concepts and integrate it into our bank of understanding. This is the basis for this strategy.
Choose two words from a discussion, a text, from a day’s work, wherever…
Write the two words on the board. Ask students how the words are alike and list those under the two words.
An example of what we mean.
Place on the board hungry and heavy
Students add- Both have two syllables
Both start and end with the same letter
Both can describe something, maybe someone who likes to eat.
They go together. If you’re always hungry you’ll get heavy.
You can be both. You can be hungry and you can be heavy.
The Writing Strategy is straight from an article in The Writer November 2006. The title is The Power of Personal Writing by Christina Baldwin.
The article advocates the idea of meaning and story telling in writing personal journals. This is an activity that requires time away from the tv, gameboys, etc. It requires reflection and creativity.
I would like to quote a few lines from the article.
“Writing organizes the mind and the actions that lead from the mind. Over time, the decisions and choices we make in the rush of the moment are informed by the self-knowledge our story gives us. We learn that if we have practiced articulating our story, if we have honored the path to this moment by writing it down, the choices we make are congruent with who we say we are. This is one of the primary promises of story: It was true in oral form and remains even more true in written form. For in writing we live life twice: once in the experience, and again in recording and reflecting upon our experience.”
The poem for this podcast is Thanksgiving from The Goof Who Invented Homework and Other School Poems by Kalli Dakos
The podcast I want to recommend is from the Dana Radio Series called Gray Matters. You subscribe or give it a trial run from itunes
Time to sign off and give my thanks to The Discovery Educational Network for the support and encouragement that they provide me. Sometimes I just need an extra push to keep going.
The music is from Blake Emmy.
