TITLE: VOCABULARY IN THE CONTENT AREA AUTHOR: Suzanne Gaffney, JDHS, AK GRADE LEVEL/SUBJECT: 9-12 OVERVIEW: Words are used to communicate. If you ave meanings for words then comprehension take place. It takes place if these meanings conjure up a picture and you know what the meanings mean. Secondary students are very good at memorizing the literal meanings of certain concepts (words) used in government or social studies classes but often do not seem to know what these meanings mean. It is essential high school students understand words such as monarchy, republic, unitary system, federal system, confederation, presidential system, parliamentary system, dictatorship, authoritarian, totalitarianism, democracy, papular sovereignty, and so on, if they are going to use them in their reading, writing, and speaking. It is then important to find ways to build meaning. Direct experience is the best way to build meaning, but when it is not possible the teacher needs to provide visual and oral experiences which allow the student to make connections. The following activity is an introductory lesson to help students to build meaning or to go beyond the meaning they already have. PURPOSE: To provide visual and oral experiences which allow the student to make connections between the new words (concepts) and what they already know. OBJECTIVES: Students will use self, classmates, text, and teacher to create meanings for selected concepts (words) from class readings. Students will demonstrate understanding of these concepts through illustration and through written and oral explanation. RESOURCES/MATERIALS: Text or readings with the concepts or words explained. ACTIVITIES AND PROCEDURES: 1. Display two or three words that you want the students to explore. Example: unitary, federal, and confederation systems. Ask them to individually map (web) these words with any meanings or associations they can think of. Often these lists are very meager but there are always some students with a fair amount of meaning already. (I always observe these webs to decide how I will group students for part 2.) 2. Group students in threes and ask them to share their webs. Assign 5 to 10 minutes of quiet reading in their text or from a handout where these words or concepts are discussed. 3. Have student groups create a group web from what they remember from their reading. 4. Using this group web, ask students to create a group diagram (or chart) with some labeling that explains the word or concept. Group members do lots of discussing at this point. As students move toward the visual, misconceptions and differences in meaning become apparent. 5. Ask groups to share their diagrams with other groups or with the whole class with an explanation of why they did what they did. 6. Finally ask groups to create a picture or drawing (similar to political cartoon) that demonstrates to concept or word. These analogies are difficult at first and work best to have a group think of an idea and then the "artist" in the group can do the illustration. With younger students and in the beginning, the teacher sometimes has to present an analogy and help point out similarities. Soon students are very good at illustrating concepts. 7. Again ask students to explain their pictures and answer any questions from other students. TYING IT ALL TOGETHER: Depending on your class length and the number of words you are introducing, the above lesson can take one or more days. One way to culminate this activity is to display the illustrations on an overhead and have the artists share their interpretation. To follow up the next day or as homework, ask students to individually write the analogy and its explanation on paper. This is a good way to evaluate a student's understanding because the student has used several sources (himself, the text, his classmates, and the teacher) to make meaning and is now individually accountable for this meaning.
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John Kurilecjmk@ofcn.org