Mr. Thompson's Fourth Grade Class
The vocabulary page has been created to clarify its purpose in our pursuit of reading. Vocabulary words are high frequency words or words that occur very often in the English language. Teachers refer to these words as the Dolch or Frye list. These words make up only small percentage of the total language but occur over 80% of the time in the materials we read everyday.
Many students do not need extra practice with the Dolch words, as they learn them by reading them repeatedly in context. The learning of the Dolch words in isolation, does not make a "reader." Sometimes a student can read the words from a list and not recognize the same word/s in a book or story. So ~ please, only review these words briefly (2-3 min.) at home per night. You can do this by having your son or daughter sort their word cards into three separate piles.
The piles would be identified as " GO, SLOW and I Don't Know"! I will be asking your child to bring in an empty shoe box to decorate in class. We will then learn how to sort the words into these piles based on very specific criteria. For example, the "GO" words must be words that they can identify within the first 2 seconds of looking at the word. The "SLOW" pile would be set aside for words that they can identify after 3-5 seconds or words that they could sound out in some fashion. The "I Don't Know" pile is self explanatory in the fact that they cannont identify the word after any length of time.
Once your child has been taught this procedure in class, the rest is a cake walk and you can let them do this on their own each night. They will need to only review the "SLOW and Don't Know stack." The only thing you will be responsible for doing is helping them to identify the words they do not know by reading the words to them and asking them to repeat the word back to you.
One day per week (and we are setting aside Thursday's on the homework routine) you can go over their list of go words to see if in fact they really know the words as quickly as they should. If they are slightly slow on a word, you might say "Do you think that was a word you knew really fast?" Most of the time they will agree that it needs to be moved to the slow pile for additional practice.
The key to this format is to give them a great deal of ownership in the process. They need to realize whether they truly know a word or not. The ownership component of this technique is what drives its overall success. They are making academic decisions about their own learning and that is a powerful tool in becoming a great reader. They are in the driver's seat and can "GO", "BE SLOW" or "JUST NOT KNOW
Copyright 2011 Mr. Thompson's Fourth Grade Class. All rights reserved.
Mr. Thompson's Fourth Grade Class