Blog 6

Chapter 7 offers insight on note taking in the classroom. Being an avid note taker, chapter 7 immediately struck my interest.I thought the difference between note taking and note making was interesting. I never considered there being a difference between the two. The chapter offered plenty of examples of strategies to incorporate note taking in a fun and useful way. One example is the dictoglos strategy. I like the fact that the students are given the opportunity to record notes independently, then allowed to discuss what they have recorded with their peers. The children can compare notes, and share any information the others may have missed. Another idea i found very useful, was having the notes completed on a powerpoint presentation, but leaving a few of the bullets blank for the students to fill in on their own time. I know it is often hard for me to keep my writing up with what the teacher is saying. By leaving a few of the bullets blank on the powerpoint, the students can focus on what the teacher is saying. Rather than having to focus their attention on writing everything down. The blank bullets ensure attention to the content , and independent study. I had a teacher in high school who used this strategy, and it worked very well. I know as a student, I was very appreciative of not having to write pages of notes. As an educator, the skeleton outline, organizes the lesson and promotes the students attention.

 I like the notion of teaching students how to take notes. I wrote random information on paper for a very long time, before discovering how to properly organize my thoughts. Learning this earlier in my educational  career would have been very beneficial. In my opinion, note taking skills are extremely important, especially in the older grades. Preparing children to write and organize information from a book or lecture will improve their chances of success in high school and college. Chapter & was very beneficial in describing way of incorporating note taking into each subject. The only question I have after reading the chapter is at what age should you begin teaching these strategies? And, Is there a way to make note taking fun? 

Blog 5

Chapter 3 addresses the concept of vocabulary in the classroom. The book offers lots of strategies to successfully expand your student's vocabulary. A few that stood out to me were, word walls, studying the roots of a word through structural word analysis, and  studying the subtle differences in the meanings of words. All of these strategies would be easy to incorporate, and students would be able to understands vocabulary words on a deeper level. The book discusses using role-play to act out the vocabulary words. Associating physical gestures with a particular word will help the students remember the word on multiple levels. I know this through personal experience. My high school Spanish teacher created a hand motion to go along with each of our vocabulary words for the week. To this day, I can still remember a majority of the words, along with corresponding hand motion. 

 The part of the chapter I found to be most helpful, was the discussion of using vocabulary in math. In my opinion math vocabulary is not only extremely boring, it is also difficult for my to retain. I often get confused between factors, products, etc. Chapter 3 explains teaching mathematics vocabulary through the system of introduce, define, discuss, and apply. This system allows the students to have multiple forms of exposure to the word. By the time they have reached the "apply" stage, they should feel fairly confident in their knowledge of the particular word. The book also talks about using math journals to study vocabulary. I think that journals are an excellent strategy to use. They engage the student into connecting the term with life outside of the classroom, allowing them to retain the information on a deeper level. 

Overall, I found this chapter to every helpful. I introduced me to many different ideas to teach vocabulary in the classroom. A question that comes to mind is how do I create vocabulary words that are appropriate for all the different levels of learners in my classroom? Also, how much instructional time should be spent on vocabulary?