Comment: This quote really stuck out to me as I read the chapter in Tompkins. I can remember spending many hours making note cards with words on them and trying to memorize the meaning of that particular word. Little do we realize that each word can mean many many things. To pin point a word to a short definition is almost not possible. Children learn best through making connections in the brain. We need to connect these new words that they learn with things that they may already know. Children need to discover and 'develop full word knowledge' as they try to learn the meanings behind them. Think of love for instance. How many meanings are there with such a short word. I love pizza. I love my car. I love my husband. I love the rain. I used the same word over and over and yet the meaning changes with every sentence. I think experience and agree that learning opposites and synonyms are the best way for children to identify more fully with a word.
Quote: What would be a fun activity that we could do as a class that would involve identifying words and getting to know truly what it means?
Sarah- tough question. But I like it. I would love to see my class interacting with words. I feel like nouns seem to be easier, but even then we come across ones that mean different things depending on how we say them. I would find a ton of these words- ie combine- to mix together; a machine used to harvest fields- and have students come up with sentences that use both the words.
ReplyDeleteI would do another focusing on adjectives, and have the students come up with creative ways to explain what that adjective means- through acting out or drawing etc.