Vocabulary

          The past few semesters, we have learned how to use strategies to teach vocabulary. Before that, I thought of teaching vocabulary as giving a student a list of words and a dictionary. That is all I can remember doing when it came to vocabulary. If the word was not part of my everyday vocabulary, I lost it. I only committed the definitions to memory long enough for the test. In fact, I can remember attempting to do this my senior year of high school. My teacher would give us a packet. Each day, we had to complete a page of the packet. Most of the words for the week were words I had never heard before. I couldn't even pronounce most of them. The only practice we got for vocabulary was what we did in the packets. Therefore, I never learned the vocabulary. The vocabulary test was pre-made test that was combined with our spelling so not all of the definitions were on the test. Because of this, I would barely pass the tests. If it would have included all of the definitions, I would have never made it.  There was only one year I can remember receiving proper instruction for vocabulary throughout my career as a student.
            My ninth grade year, my teacher would give us a list of twenty words each week. We were responsible for writing a definition and a sentence for each word. After we had a chance to do that, we would go over each word as a class. As we discussed each word, we would come up with one word that would help us associate the word to the definition. This made learning vocabulary so much easier and very effective. It is definitely a strategy I would consider using in my future classroom.
            During our tutoring sessions, we have been using different strategies for learning vocabulary. One of the strategies we used resembled one of the strategies the book used for math. The word would go in the middle. To the top left of the word, the student would write a simple definition. To the top right of the word, the student would write synonyms of the word. To the bottom left of the word, the student would use the word in a sentence. To the bottom right of the word, the student would illustrate the word. I found that this helped my student learn the word and remember it easily. I have also seen this strategy used in science when I tutor at work.
            I feel that it is important for teachers to implement as many strategies as possible to help students learn vocabulary. Students need these strategies to help commit these words to memory. This will help aid the students in comprehension. If the student is able to learn the word and use it correctly, achieving academically becomes easier.