So for the past few weeks in my junior American Literature class I've been struggling with participation in general. Lately, I have to say that I've been having some successful days at raising the energy level of the class and it seems to be paying off in terms of their academic performance. Earlier in the week, to prepare for a vocabulary test, I used Joal's idea of using drama to demonstrate your understanding of a vocabulary word. I broke my class up into groups or two or three and assigned them a different word each. Each group was responsible for coming up with a brief skit that demonstrated the definition of a word without saying the word itself or any words from its definition. A few groups seemed to struggle with certain words that would have required them to be a little more creative, but the groups seemed to nail their skits.
The best part of this activity was that I moved to the back of the classroom to watch their skits. I simply asked who wanted to go first and the first brave group volunteered. I was energized by their eagerness to participate and perform their skit. After a brief round of applause, they performed their skits. (I had actually asked the audience members to let the groups finish the skit before shouting out the answers to the words.) I was pleased to see that students that are sometimes disengaged in other actitivities were now raising their hands to make their guesses. The SECOND MOST BEAUTIFUL THING about this day was seeing the students who performed calling on the students with their hands raised. It reminded me a lot of the way our discussion works in C&I.
The MOST BEAUTIFUL THING about this day was that after the first group went, I did not have to call on any other groups to go. The next willing group simply stepped to the front of the class each and every time. I was so excited from this that I repeatedly thanked them for their courage and told them how impressed I was with their outgoingness.
And when the vocabulary test came . . .
Twenty-one students aced the test! I was kind of scared by this number at first because it made me feel like I gave an easy test (Fill in the blank with a vocabulary word from the list above). But when it came down to it, the students were able to perform extremely well. I'm excited that with the next set of vocabulary words, students will have this confidence of doing well on the last test. I'm excited to give them an even more challenging list of vocabulary words and seeing if they can surpass my expectations once again.
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Great idea! I have been copying my master teacher's review method, which is sort of a Pictionary-type game, but the results have been a little lack-luster. I think I'll try your method next time. I think that the fill-in-the-blanks type of test might be too easy, but that doesn't mean that you can't change the next one. I have my freshmen write a paragraph using at least 10 of the 12 vocab words I give them. They get two points per word, and five points for the overall quality of the paragraph. If they use a word correctly, but they don't demonstrate their understanding of the word, they only get one point. For now these are take-home, but the next one will be an open-note in-class test. By the end of the year it will be a no-note test.
Just checking out how things are going, Mr. So Much Fun, and I'm so excited about this. I haven't taught vocab at all this semester mostly because I feel like my schedule is so tight in terms of content that I haven't wanted to take the time to do vocab, and it's just not that high a priority for me--and because I don't like any of the assessments I've seen for it. But I assigned vocab for The Woman Warrior and, to be honest, when I assigned it I really wasn't sure what I was going to do with it. Not so great, but I figured I'd work it out.
I love the idea of doing Joal's activity, but again I don't feel like we have the time. Our class periods are only 40 minutes long! But from reading about this and mmm...coffee's method, I feel like I know where to go next!
I chose the vocab I did because those words were at important points in the text, which was very challenging.
Their homework a couple nights ago was to look up all the words. Tonight their homework in practicing close reading is to go back and find the words in the text and to write a sentence that rephrases the sentence that contains the word but retains the meaning. I was thinking of having them do skits or pictionary or something tomorrow, but I think that would just take too long given what else I have planned, so I am going to have each student read a sentence they wrote and have them call on a student to tell the class which word they were replacing.
I had struggled with thinking of what type of assessment to use--I honestly hate the idea of matching or having them write a memorized definition, and I love mmm...coffee's idea of having them write a paragraph using a certain number of the words. This also saves me a bunch of work creating a quiz!!
Thanks!
By the way, Mr. S., your class sounds super fun! I would have loved you as my high school teacher!
Ms. K
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