Vocabulary Strategy

Here is a good strategy to help build academic vocabulary. The strategy is called "Say it another way." You would find common words and start compiling a list of different ways to say the word. Teachers could make the list, but it would be more powerful if students made and added to the list.

You could also use this strategy to for different STAAR stems. For instance, in ELA class you could list the different ways students might see a question stem about theme. The math STAAR test uses all sorts of different phrasings on question stems. You could use this chart to address that variety.

This chart would also be good for tone words.

Replacing lecturing with Talk, Read, Talk, Write

First, thanks to all of you for attending the training. I thought Nancy did a great job of giving us a practical and realistic way to improve our instruction. Second, thanks to those of you who were the first to post. My hope is that we can keep communicating our thoughts and ideas through this medium during the summer.

I've been reading Nancy's book and noticed something interesting. She asks her readers to "think of TRTW as a replacement for the lecture approach" and to replace lecturing and similar 'sit and get' approaches with reading academic texts and having structured conversation about the text. Perhaps there is a place for lecture, but, in my opinion, that "place" is very small and very short, especially regarding teaching junior high students. When I think about my most fruitful learning experiences, I remember two things: 1) Having experiences like traveling to other countries and starting new jobs where I was forced to 'learn on the fly' and 2) Having opportunities to have in-depth and meaningful conversations with other people. Only a few times (if ever) are we able to give our students extraordinary experiences like traveling to other countries or visiting a place outside school, but with the TRTW approach, we can give our students opportunities to have in-depth and meaningful conversations with other people daily.

I'm looking forward to seeing how we will get our students reading academic texts, learning more academic language, and learning by talking to each other.

TRTW

TRTW was a great training! I already have one activity planned for the first week back to school. Now I am looking for more articles for my classroom.

Monday PD

I think that this will be a good way to introduce a new topic and even vocabulary. Now to find articles on different reading levels.

I thought Nancy Motley did a great job in her presentation.  I've already thought about taking a longer lesson that we have taught in the past, and breaking it down into smaller passages to use as part of the TRTW strategy.