Juli Kendall's Weekly
Reading Workshop Journal
A MiddleWeb Listserv Project
Self-selected members of the MiddleWeb Discussion List are joining
together to explore the Reading Workshop and other ideas about supporting
young adolescent readers. Juli Kendall, a reading teacher/coach in Long
Beach, California, is helping moderate the discussion. Juli is also keeping
a weekly journal of her own Reading Workshop initiative. Find out more about
our project at our Reading Workshop homepage.
You'll find Juli's background article here.
Links to many of the tools created by Juli and her colleagues are embedded
in these journals. Most often, when you click on them, a PDF file will begin
to download. You'll find a list of the downloads here.
Week #13
New Words and
Vocabulary Development
"What can you do if you come to a word that you don't know?" the
visitor asked. "I can get out the dictionary and look it up,"
the student from my class responded. Last year, I spent lots of time planning
and teaching lessons to help my students have a variety of strategies to
use when they were "solving unknown words." What was this student
thinking! He went through the whole process and, at the end of the year,
gave the same answer as he had given to me at the beginning. What about
all the other strategies we had learned?
Eating Humble Pie isn't one of my favorite things, but that's what I'm currently
doing. This year I am rethinking completely the way that I teach students
what to do when they come to a word in their reading that they do not know.
This process of self-reflection has been long and arduous. I started by
reading Janet Allen's book, Words,
Words, Words: Teaching Vocabulary in Grades 4-12 (Stenhouse Publishers).
It provoked a rethinking of how I teach for solving unknown words, as well
as, how I help students learn new words and what they mean. Here's what
I have done.
At the beginning of the school year, I interviewed students individually
on what they did if they came to a word they didn't know when they were
reading. Most said that they "sound it out." Several talked about
looking at the pictures, and one mentioned the dictionary. These are students
who are at risk of not going on to 6th grade next year. Almost half were
already retained this year because of low reading benchmarks. They need
to learn additional strategies for solving unknown words.
Next, I decided to model (think aloud) how I solve unknown words (tricky
words) during Read Aloud times and individual reading conferences. This
seemed really awkward, at first. Now it is getting a little easier but I
want to get so that I do it naturally and "on-the-run."
In Words, Words, Words, Janet Allen explains the idea of modeling
and demonstration. "Talking through the process (thinking aloud) gives
students the opportunity to hold the teacher's thought processes up as a
mirror for their own thinking." (p. 23) I'm demonstrating several strategies
by thinking aloud: rereading, using the context of the word in the sentence,
using other words in the sentence, and thinking about whether or not it
makes sense. During conferences and Independent Reading, I'm watching to
see if there is a change in how students approach words that they do not
know. I want them to have a variety of strategies they can use.
Next steps I am considering-
1. Students use post-its to mark places in their reading when
they come to an unknown word.
2. Students write the strategy they use on the post-it and indicate whether
or not it worked.
3. Students share the strategies they used and how they worked with their
Reading Partners.
4. Use individual conference time to "teach" and model word solving
after doing a running record.
I'll continue to "think aloud" for solving unknown words, but
I think I am ready to start puzzling out the "learning new words and
what they mean" piece. I need to keep in mind that students must be
reading Just Right books to make this work. One thing I've discovered is
that having the "Solving Unknown Words" chart up on the wall doesn't
ensure that students will learn the strategies and use them.
Leti's update
Solving unknown words in reading
Leti told me that when she is reading and comes to a word that she doesn't
know she sounds it out. When I asked her what other things she could do,
she didn't have a response.
What happened as we went along and what strategies we tried
During running records on Just Right books, she stopped when she came
to a word that she didn't know and sounded it out. Then she repeated the
word and read on. If her attempt at sounding out the word didn't make sense
she made no other attempts to solve it. I tried having her go back at the
end of the running record and reread the tricky word/s in the sentence.
We talked about whether or not her response made sense, and sometimes she
made another attempt at the word.
How we adjusted and retaught and what progress we've seen
Now I "think aloud" with her after she has finished her running
record. I am teaching her using these strategies: rereading, using the context
of the word in the sentence, using other words in the sentence, and thinking
about whether or not it makes sense. We go back to the tricky parts and
talk about how she could try other ways of figuring out the word. She is
beginning to reread the sentence on her own. She told me that helped her
think about whether or not the word she chose made sense. She still needs
more practice using a variety of strategies to solve unknown words.
See Juli's December curriculum map.
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