Understanding Vocabulary and Figurative Language - Goal 11

I'm joining a few other terrific bloggers in reading this book by Jennifer Serravallo and sharing our thoughts about the goal and 3 strategies from the book each week!

If you're just joining us now, no worries!  You can catch up quickly by following the links below:

Introduction & Goals 1-4

Goal 5: Understanding Plot & Setting

Goal 6- Thinking About Characters

Goal 7: Understanding Themes and Ideas

Goal 8: Determining Main Topic(s) and Idea(s)

Goal 9: Determining Key Details

Goal 10: Getting the Most From Text Features

Goal 11:Understanding Vocabulary and Figurative Language

Why is this goal important?  

Understanding vocabulary when reading is crucial for reading comprehension.  The research is clear on this and it's important to include instruction on word meaning and vocabulary into our classrooms.

Who needs this strategy:

• students that don't do well on a standardized word assessment
• students that have difficulty determining meanings of unknown words within text
• students that have difficulty finding clues in text for inferring meaning

The author cautions that we are not trying to determine student word knowledge but rather we want to know if they can use the text to infer the meaning of the unknown word. 

 "Multiple Meaning Words"

Who is it for: Levels J-Z+ 

What Genre/Text: any

Skills Used: monitoring for meaning, inferring

This strategy encourages students to think about whether a multiple meaning word is being used when something isn't making sense within the context when reading.  Students are suggested to read before and after.  Think about how it's used and choose a definition that makes sense.

Prompt students to 

• think about how the word is being used 
• think about what meanings you know for the word  
• is there another meaning that would make sense here in the text?

Using an anchor chart like the one below may help to model how to think/list the multiple meanings of a word.

Source

Here's another chart to help work on multiple meanings of words!

Source

 "Infer to Figure it Out"

Who is it for: Levels L-Z+ 

What Genre/Text: any

Skills Used: inferring

This strategy involves getting students to stop when they come to an unknown word and use clues from the text or picture to help you guess the meaning of the word. 

Prompt students by reminding them to stop for unknown words; check the pictures for clues; and to keep reading past the unknown word. 

This anchor chart below shows one way to get students to focus on using different ways of inferring to determine the meaning of words.

Source

I'm stopping here after two strategies today as this post is late. 

I hope you are enjoying this series as much as I am! 

My "Elementary Box" Review

It was back to school for me this week!
For the past couple of weeks, things have been CRAY, CRAY!  (If you're a teacher you understand!)
As I was writing the date today, I realized that August flew by so quickly that I forgot to review my Elementary Box!

I'm sorry I'm late in reviewing my August box.  If you missed the July box, you can see it {HERE}.

The theme of the box was appropriately - Back To School!

Here's a look inside the box as I opened it:

It's always exciting to open the lid of the box in anticipation of what's to come!

First, a bag of goodies for a prize bucket/treasure chest: sticky lizards, puzzle rings, smiley stamps, smiley face balls, and erasers!  This pack of treasure chest items was listed as being $10.

I love the variety of things and they are all things that most 3rd graders will like for a prize!

Next, was a multi-pack of chevron and dots library pockets!

I love these pockets and especially love all the colors!  There were 35 altogether in the pack (7 of each color!)  The value of the pack of library pockets was listed as $6. 

 I've used these in the past to hold my "bead sticks" when I used that as a behavior incentive plan.  I'm not using behavior beads this year, so I'm not sure how I'll use these so stay tuned.  If you have any great ideas, let me know in the comments below!  The suggested uses given on the enclosed card are bulletin boards, to hold game pieces, job chart, vocabulary card holders and more!

Birthday postcards were the next thing to come out of the box.  These are Superhero themed postcards with a value of $6.  There were 30 cards included in the pack!  These would be great if I had a Superhero theme going on in my classroom but I don't.  I'm thinking of giving these away to someone that has this theme in their room.  I do like the generous amount of cards that they give so it'll accommodate large classes.  

(I have had only 1 class of 30 students in my entire career - that was my first year of teaching too!  Let me tell you - that was a lot of students! It took forever to correct papers! This year I have 15!  I've never had this low of a number of students, but this year's kiddos need smaller classes...they have a lot of needs!)

Then I pulled out these small sticky magnetic squares - a pack of 100 for a value of $7.

I was really thrilled to see these because they were on my list of things to buy for my classroom!  I am using them for my helper names and I've been a little disappointed because they keep falling off of the names.  I might have to hot-glue them on - but I'm hoping that it's just the humidity we having now and that they'll improve when the air changes!  So - I'll have to wait to see what the final verdict is on these magnetic squares. 

The final item in the August box was chevron days of the week binder clips!

These are awesome colors - I'm using a brights color theme this year so they definitely match!  They also coordinate with the pack of binder clips that I got in July.  They also fit in with the chevron and dots pockets above.  I like that idea and wonder if future boxes will contain things that will match prior box items.  The clips have a value of $9.  I love binder clips so this is a great item for me and they will help to keep me organized - even more than I am already!

That's it for the August Elementary Box!  Overall, I'm pleased with my new items!  The Superhero cards are not a theme I'm using, but I could use them if I wanted to - and they are quality cards.  I haven't decided yet if I'm thrilled with the magnetic squares.  But - everything else are things that I already use or will use in my classroom!  A thumbs up for this month's box!

I hope you enjoyed taking a peek into my Elementary Box of surprises!  I've already received my September box and can't wait to share with you what I got...that post will be coming soon!