Vocabulary Instruction

There were three questions to choose from to answer and the question I chose was 

Please describe the methods by which your past teachers (either college professors or K-12 teachers) tended to teach core vocabulary words in your discipline. What did typical vocabulary instruction look like? To what extent did this vocabulary instruction help you to develop rich and enduring understandings of core concepts? How did this type of vocabulary instruction compare to the types of vocabulary instruction recommended in the Harmon, Wood, and Hedrick reading? Do you want to replicate your previous teachers’ practices, or do you want to teach vocabulary in a different way? Please explain.

Well my major is Biology, and the most memorable way that teachers tended to teach vocabulary was always through worksheets. Another method that I remember is copying from the textbook and writing the definitions by hand. In my high school experience those were the only two options that I encountered, but I was lucky one time my science teacher was teaching us all about cells and rather than teach us the exact definitions we talked about what each organelle did and related that to a specific word. So for example perioxomes clean up the cell and how you remember that is the word peroxide is it. I thought that was the best example and my teacher did that for every organelle in the cell. That for me made the test a lot easier to take and I still remember what most of the organelles do even now because of that lesson.

When I look at the question "To what extent did this vocabulary instruction help you to develop rich and enduring understandings of core concepts". I would have to say that the normal vocabulary instruction that I usually received I really did not develop a rich enduring understanding. I remember learning words and their definitions for the test and then the next day forgetting all about them. The reason I did this was because the vocabulary was unnecessary for everyday conversation. Of course that changed when I got to college and I remember the vocabulary because I wanted to rather than I was forced to learn.

Basically the way I was taught vocabulary did not have much if at all of the Harmon, Wood, and Hendrick. In the reading it talks about strategies to help understand the vocabulary words and these included prediction, questioning, summarizing, inferring and clarifying word meanings. Also in that reading it talks of a few specific things that were not used in my classroom setting very well.  We didn't really use instructional time to do vocabulary words or rather the teacher did not teach the vocab words to us rather we had to look them up on our as well as we did not read very many background informational text that explained our vocabulary words at all. 

In my opinion the way that the teacher taught me was not all wrong I did learn how to look up words and how to be able do work on my own. All that being said I think I would try to teach in a little different way just like how the one teacher I had that taught me the organelles of a cell in a slightly different way. I would like to find my own way of teaching vocabulary and make the way I teach help the students to remember it for a long time after I teach it, unlike how I was able to forget it the day after the test. I am still not sure of how I would be able to teach like that so I am going to start thinking of a way to do that from now on.  

Comprehension Instruction

The question I decided to blog about was number 1.

Please describe a time that a teacher really supported you in thinking deeply about a text, in such a way that you applied several of the comprehension processes that Buehl mentions on page five. What specifically did the teacher do to support your comprehension? How did the teacher’s approach compare with the approaches recommended by Buehl? For instance, did the teacher provide any frontloading? What can you learn from this teacher that you can use in your own comprehension instruction in the future?

First question was describe a time when a teacher really supported me in thinking deeply about a text. Believe it or not the one I remember the most happened just recently it was last semester in my Evolutionary Biology class my professor had us read scientific papers about evolution every week. 

After we read the text we needed to basically write a paper based on our understanding and in this paper we had to make connections with our prior knowledge. This professor was unique in a way that he hated for us to review what we read word for word. He wanted our opinions, and our own unique point of view.  He also really encouraged us to write down any questions that the paper brought into our minds. Also he wanted us to be able to know how we could answer those questions so he had us make a predictions about what would happen and how our own questions could be answered.  It was only through that assignment that I was able to determine what parts of the paper had significants and what parts were not as important to the overall experiment.

It took me along time to figure out exactly how my professor wanted me to be able to read the paper as well as exactly how to evaluate a science paper even now I have a really hard time reading and evaluating papers.

In all honest though the professor sort of explained the assignment but he really didn't go into too much detail about what exactly we need to do. So he didn't use any front loading. This teacher really taught me the importance of really being able to understand and comprehend what I read. Especially for the purpose of being able to write a paper about it. Also the importance about being able to make inferences. That is one thing that I really want to be able to bring into my own classroom. I want the students to be able to make inferences based on what they read. 

Introduction

 Well the first blog that I need to post is called my Introduction so I thought I needed to include a picture of myself. So this is me.

My favorite type of flower is the cherry blossoms or sakura blossoms I was able to see them for the first time in my life and thought that this picture would be the perfect thing to describe me. The next picture that you see is a sakura blossom. 

 My interests and hobbies include reading, watching movies, and I really love to go on walks just for the fun of walking around. I also really love watching fireworks and just relaxing or rather lazying around is one of my favorite things to do.

My major is Composite biology with a minor in chemistry, and the reason why I chose to major in that is because I have always hated biology during high school. I know a weird reason right but the reason why I hated it was because I was not able to get into the material. Another way of putting it is that I was not able to get my hands dirty and actually get to understand everything, but then when I took a biology course in college I fell in love with the topic until that point I had really been debating between a math major and a biology major. That one class tipped the scale in the biology favor. I just really enjoyed biology over math.  I would define my discipline as the study of the world around you, because biology really does include everything. It is the study of living organisms. That is another thing that drew me toward biology is because it can be tied into our everyday lives. Science is an amazing thing!

When I think of the term literacy, honestly the first thing that comes to mind is books. Maybe that is because I am currently helping elementary students to be able to read better, but that is the first thing that pops into my head. As I looked deeper into the term literacy though this is what I came to define it as "a persons knowledge in a particular subject or field." So the term literacy can also be applied to our everyday life as well as my major biology. So I can become literate or a person with knowledge in the particular field of biology.

I really look forward to this new semester and I am excited about this blogging idea. I have never done this before so it is going to be an exciting new experience.