Ch. 7

I completely agree with the steps the author laid out for teaching vocabulary. In high school I had a vocabulary book that we worked out of every week, and not a single word was relevant to what we were reading in class. I memorized the words for the test every Friday, and promptly forgot them right after. What would have been much more helpful was discussing the vocabulary in books such as The Scarlet Letter or Hamlet, which I often had to read with a dictionary. 

Even though I feel that I have a somewhat extensive vocabulary, I know that I struggle with giving definitions for words, which will pose a problem for me in my classroom. I can use words correctly in a sentence but when asked to define it or provide synonyms I am at a loss. It will be important for me to completely understand all of the class vocab words before presenting them to the students. But first I need to decide what I think "knowing a word" actually means. I had never thought about all of the connotations of that phrase before reading this chapter. I always felt that being able to use the word in a sentence proved knowledge of it, but I can see how knowing synonyms and multiple meanings would show an even greater understanding. I like the idea of the concept circles; this would show that the students understand what the word means and also how it relates to other words.