Vocabulary, most teachers and professionals realize, is the cornerstone of a well-rounded education. Think about it for a moment, if you will: Without a well-constructed sentence using the right words, an essay, story or poem cannot be completed.
With that important word-worthy aspect in mind, today on TeachHUB.com, frequent contributing writer Janelle Cox, herself a seasoned educator on the East Coast, issues several worthy teaching strategies for increasing students’ vocabularies, noting that instructing vocabularies requires indirect exposure to words as well as word strategies.
Janelle’s teaching strategies include:
- Inventive Vocabulary
- Word Awareness
- And More!
In summation, Janelle notes: “Effective vocabulary learning means you must provide students with multiple exposures to words and their meanings. If you can get students to be interested in playing with words now then, you have won half the battle of creating students who love words throughout their lifetime.”
Do you have any teaching strategies for vocabulary expansion that you would like to share with us?
The Magic Phrase as a Teaching Strategy
All too often, educators fall into a rut of “Don’ts” when attempting to carry out a lesson plan: “Don’t use commas there. Don’t bore your audience with that intro. Don’t settle for a three-point thesis. Don’t use that quotation there.”
But veteran teacher and frequent TeachHUB.com contributor Jordan Catapano notes that a better way to achieve the desired outcome is to use the phrase “next time” when providing feedback: “Don’t write a generic introduction, write a personal story next time. Don’t put commas there, but use Comma Rule #3 we discussed in class next time. Don’t shout out the answer, but please raise your hand when you think of something next time and I’ll call on you.”
Catapano intones that by giving students a solid idea of what their next behavior expectation is, they will have something definitive to strive toward.
