I am a big fan of the Facebook page Grandiloquent Word of the Day. Some of their words are more adult than others so I have to be careful to pick and choose words that won't get me into trouble with the parents/guardians and of course school leadership. I would prefer to go the George Carlin route, and teach whatever words I want... but I also want to keep my job.
This week's word was:
Teaching vocabulary to juveniles on the cusp of teenagedom (12 year olds) is quite the challenge. Especially in an online school setting. I've had to adapt different techniques that would go over just fine in a brick-and-mortar (physical school) to work in this online world. When I search the internet for ideas to help me I find lots of fantastic ones! But they are all focused on the brick-and-mortar world. That is when I flex my creative muscles and either make up my own stuff, or bend/twist what I find to fit the virtual world of my 7th grade classroom.
Another of the major issues facing us teaching in the virtual world is engaging the students, well it is really a major issue in general. In the virtual school it is so much harder because we cannot notice the disengagement when it happens. We don't get the visual cues of eyes glazing over and drool, heads going down on desks, or other off task behavior/choices.
We hold virtual lessons that are live, where students join us in a specialized kind of chat room with audio/visual capabilities (along with a bunch of other nifty tools such as screen sharing and document sharing). Once they are in the room, we don't have a real way of knowing if they are engaged or not. We have an "engagement tool" that lets us check the % of students who are doing things like answering a poll or writing in the chat box. But, there is no sure fire way to tell if they are listening/paying attention. We have to stay positive, check for understanding/comprehension frequently, and hope.
To address both the issues of teaching vocabulary and student engagement, lately I've been playing a lot of games with my students that have to do with the words we are studying.
This week I did a word scramble. It is the first time I tried it. I came up with the short background/excuse that I was tired and had a "Vocabulary Fail" and needed their help to fix up the vocab words. To assist in the de-scrambling I provided the definitions of the words out of the order that the scrambled words appeared.
The vocabulary words come from the novel we are reading The Watsons Go to Birmingham -1963.
Below is what I used in the lesson:
Then to check for understanding I showed images that would be able to be described or paired with the vocab words. Students were to identify which vocab word would best fit the picture. I also had students jump on their mic or in the chat to provide examples of the words being used in sentences.
Overall I think the lesson went OK. I ended up having a lot of the same students participating, and the usual group of silent kids staying silent. Our engagement monitor thingy-ma-bob (that is the technical term) said I had around an 80% engagement...
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