A World of Words, by Susan Mandel Glazer
Successful word studies guide students to build their vocabularies – and their ability to learn
Defining a word by drawing what it conjures up in his or her imagination helps a student develop – and use – a broad vocabulary.
Although I was very young (and this was nearly 60 years ago), I recall well the emphasis my fourth grade teacher put on increasing our vocabularies. Miss Maybe insisted we have several – a vocabulary for math words, one for social studies, another for science – vocabularies for all things experienced in and outside of school. A visit one day from the principal prompted Miss Maybe to brag about this emphasis on increasing our knowledge of words. "Kalmen," she said, "tell Dr. Frances what we study the most." Kalmen Lee, who sat behind me in class, declared, "Vocabulary, of course. That's all we do. Vocabulary, vocabulary and more vocabulary." "Well," instructed Miss Maybe, "Tell Dr. Frances about the vocabulary words you have learned." "Okay," replied Kalmen, "but I have to get them out of my locker."
Even at the age of nine I asked myself, "Aren't vocabulary words what you say and write? How can you use words if they're kept in your locker?" Poor Kalmen. His concept of vocabulary as just lists of words had nothing to do with making language interesting or communicating more effectively.
Isolated language
Miss Maybe treated word learning as an isolated subject. None of the words were connected to content or literature studies. She selected words from a fourth grade word list and daily introduced a word by saying it, writing it in a sentence and then having the children copy the word and its definition into their vocabulary notebooks. Inevitably, some students, like Kalmen, viewed the word studies as separate and apart from how words can be used to enlarge and enhance their worlds.
Integrated words
Mrs. Candy Mulligan, a teacher at the Center for Reading and Writing at Rider University in Lawrenceville, NJ, collects words from her seventh and eighth grade social studies and science books. She also selects those words that she feels would be useful in her students' daily lives from the SAT preparation booklet. She uses these words, not more than five at a time, in conversation for several days in a row.
Each student has a daily contract, or assignments for the day, that includes a vocabulary study. Mrs. Mulligan lists five words on each student's contract, including a selection of the words used in conversation. Some children's contracts include words she feels will spur interest for that particular child. Mrs. Mulligan gives students oral and written directions to:
Select any word he or she wants and make a picture about it in his or her mind.
Define it by drawing that picture in order to illustrate the word's meaning.
An example of how one student interpreted this assignment is Jason, age 13, who selected the word "instigate." He told me that he picked that word because "I made a picture in my mind that looked cool." The picture Jason created resembled a castle gate leading to a store called Blades, Boards, and Skates. "I named it that because that's a store I like going to. I drew the gate because the word instigate reminded me of an instant gate rising up to go into the store. Instigate means to provoke or talk someone into doing something." I asked him how he'd found that out. "From the SAT book that Mrs. Mulligan has. She has lots of them," he responded. "So, anyway, I thought about persuading my mom to bring me to the store and buy me a new pair of blades. So I "instigated" her to do that."
Learning to learn
This exchange reveals that Jason has become a metacognitive thinker. He knows what to do in order to find out the meanings of many new words. With the encouragement and guidance of his teacher, he's learned to:
Select a word to which he can make a connection.
Make a picture in his mind about a word.
Draw the picture indicating the connection to something already in his life or his memory.
Take a good guess about the meaning of a word.
Confirm the guess by using SAT preparation books, a dictionary or thesaurus and other word sources.
Vocabulary for life
Later in the day, Jason realized he'd used the word "persuading" in our conversation. "Gosh, I'm really learning to use lots of new words," he commented.
Mrs. Mulligan and her teaching colleagues at the Center for Reading and Writing guide children in how to learn, and that's the key. Jason realized that he knew the steps necessary to independently decipher word meanings. Once a reluctant learner because of much unnecessary or unkind critiques in past educational settings, Jason can now take control and solve a learning puzzle. His confidence about learning has grown. His successes are mounting. And this, really, is the goal of vocabulary study.
Susan Mandel Glazer is the Director of the Center for Reading and Writing at Rider University in Lawrence, NJ.
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