"It's not enough to have students memorize one definition of a word; to develop full word knowledge, they need to learn more about a word."
As we've been studying the most effective ways to build vocabulary and spelling, I've been thinking about the things that helped my word comprehension. Like most people, the words I'm most likely to remember the meanings of are the ones that I have some sort of interaction with or I've created a mental picture of. We should be creating meaningful interactions with words for our students or we can't expect them to remember the meaning or spelling of those words. And there's more to comprehension than just knowing the definition of a word--as teachers, it's our responsibility to enrich meaning and give more than the bare minimum to our students. We shouldn't just skim the surface, perhaps by having them memorize a definition. We should give them history and interesting facts and usage. This will help them remember and apply better and it'll give their knowledge a richness.
What are some creative ways we can be enriching word meaning for our students?
I liked this idea about remembering any knowledge because it is so true! I think creative way include anything that seems fun and interesting to the students. I remember using vocab words in skits and it helped me because I was using it in context.
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