language learning

Language is Juicy

Lily Wong Fillmore argued that native English speaking teachers take Language for granted. Those who know English well, may not understand that students “who are speakers of varieties of English––[may] find the academic registers used in texts to be more difficult to untangle than do speakers of “standard English” who

Episode 31: Metalinguistic Awareness and Grammatical Awareness in Action

How does teaching parts of speech enhance word consciousness and ones ability to solve analogies? Well, the more one knows about words, the more word consciousness he or she will gain. This means that a close look at English grammar needs to happen within a word conscious classroom. The teaching

Episode 30: Specific Word Learning

For the majority of my teaching career, I have been teaching vocabulary using the specific word learning technique. According to the Vocabulary Handbook, this technique falls under intentional vocabulary teaching. Hence, many of the passages from our anthologies and basal readers utilize specific word learning as an intentional instructional approach to

Episode 28: R.O.P.E. Strategy for Analogy Instruction

A few years ago, I went to a professional development workshop on using Analogies for teaching gifted learners. The presenter provided a strategy entitled R.O.P.E. which stands for Relationships, Order of words, Part of speech, and Exactness. I was fascinated by this strategy and I started using it with my students.

Teaching Students about the Schwa

In their introduction to the 2015, Perspectives on Language and Literacy Journal, Berg and Buckerfield introduced the issue with, Vocabulary Research Meets the Classroom. They stated, “the examination of how to effectively teach vocabulary so that our students are equipped with the word knowledge necessary, not to simply survive, but to

Episode 26: Unlocking Text with Morphological Study

As I set up my classroom for word study, I consulted the Growing Words: Word Part Instruction Guide.  Before I introduced the Word Part of the Week, I wanted to introduce Latin and Greek Roots to my students in a creative way.  I started looking online for materials that would set

Episode 25: Teaching Students about Compound Words

In a previous post, I wrote about encouraging students to look inside of words for spelling patterns. In this week’s post, I am directing students to look inside of words again, but this time we are focusing on smaller words, words that are considered Anglo-Saxon base words. I then explain

Episode 24: Looking Inside of Words

The more I build a word conscious classroom, the more I am committed to word study. Scott, Skobel, and Wells (2008) argued that words are the lifeblood of literacy. Hence, word study should be central to all literacy instruction. Included in word study is spelling, decoding (word calling), and word

Episode 23: Vocabulary Ladders and AAVE

I speak African American Vernacular of English (AAVE) and at times, it trips me up. As it happens, in this podcast episode, you will hear me mispronounce one of our vocabulary words. Plus, if you’ve been following my podcast, then you know that I mix up my verb tenses and

Episode 22: Studying the Author’s Word Choice Using Predictions

Predictions are powerful! In fact, we ask students to make predictions all the time because student predictions provide a window into the situation model, or the mental model, that students create in their minds. In this podcast episode, I decided to use a lesson from Texts and lessons for content-area reading.

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