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Friday, April 2, 2010

Lesson De-Planned

Teaching vocabulary has been fun. In our class we are working on fabulous adjectives, replacements for the "baby words" of elementary school. Not happy or sad anymore, my sixth grade charges are elated or melancholy, thank you. The kids seem to take joy in tossing in these words into conversation and into their writing, often sharing the same sentences with street, slang, or southernisms. We play vocabulary games, use graphic organizers, make vocabulary cartoons, and our pre-holiday celebration was a rousing game of vocabulary Jeopardy!

I feel confident that these kids will know these words forever, and maybe some of them will even be bitten by the wordie bug and become interested in other intriguing words.

But with the proposed new plan for educational evaluation, I might find little use in these activities, for these words would be of no value unless they happen to be among the specifically tested material on the high-stakes assessment. Too bad. They actually seem to be enjoying both the process and the product of their learning.

2 comments:

MJ said...

Even if they forget the words, they may remember the joy in learning them. That would be worth it, too.

SJR said...

I still remember when I learned certain words in school ... and that was a LONG time ago! Good teachers make a difference.