The famed Howard Gardner, the creator of the multiple intelligences theory, was the plenary speaker on the opening night at TESOL 2011. He talked about the need for society and teachers to nurture five minds in the digital age:
- the disciplined mind
- the synthesizing mind
- the creating mind
- the respectful mind
- the ethical mind
I feel Gardner's new multiple minds model nicely sums up what each learning institution should establish as its "SLOs" for the 21st century.
Twitter in Class
I heard a big buzz surrounding Twitter as an instructional tool at this year's TESOL Convention. This means you would have to allow cellphone use in the classroom. One presentation illustrated how students sent tweets as a way to provide instant feedback on a fellow student's speech. The instructor used the TwitterFall site to gather and display all the feedback, which was non-structured, spontaneous, as well as anonymous. Talk about engaging all the students in an ideal, just-in-time setting!
Teaching Vocabulary Per Se--An Idea Whose Time Has Come
At TESOL 2010, I attended several vocabulary-teaching presentations, one of which was given by an adult ed teacher from Illinois. Laurie Martin advocates and practices explicitly teaching academic vocabulary to help students transition to credit. She offered tons of practical ideas to teach the so-called "tier 2" academic words, including personalizing examples and utilizing interesting pictures. Her handout is here. At the bottom of page 4 of her handout, you will also find a web link to 10 units of vocabulary lesson plans that you can download and use.
A vocabulary guru, Dr. Robert Marzano of Englewood, Colorado, presented to a packed room a comprehensive approach to vocabulary development. He shared research stats and declared that the vocabulary wars are over, that wide reading is insufficient, and that explicitly teaching vocabulary is highly necessary.
He explained Isabelle Beck's distinctions between Tier I words, Tier II words, and Tier III words. They are differentiated based on frequency and importance. For example, Tier I words are the most basic ones that if you don't know, you'll be in trouble. Natives don't have to learn these Tier I words because they are encountered so frequently.
He said that there is no longer an excuse for any student to leave school lacking a general knowledge of
- the basic general terms
- the advanced general terms
- the academic terms
necessary for success in the US society. He went on to propose non-negotiable lists of critical terms to teach, terms that are standardized at the school district level. He praised the statewide academic vocabulary lists of Tennessee and Oklahoma.
As he introduced a 6-step process for teaching new terms, which does not favor students looking up definitions at early stages, he shared his list of 420 semantic clusters of basic and advanced terms. For example, his Cluster 1 is modals with such terms as
- can, cannot, could
- may, might, must
- shall, should, will, would
- ought, used to
The 420 clusters are further organized into 60 super-clusters. For examples, his Super Cluster 10 is all about animals and includes Clusters
- #32 Birds
- # 35 Baby Animals
- #64 Cats/Dogs
- #70 Land Animals (General)
- #82 Sea Animals
- #95 Insects
- #117 Action Related to Animals
- #155 Parts of Animals
- #188 Rodents
- #189 Dwellings of Animals
- #194 Animals (General)
- #309 Shellfish
- #310 Equipment Used with Animals
- #341 Primates
His system has both teaching and testing implications. He distributed a list of paired words called "Snapshot Test Words," which, with simple instructions such as "Use it" and "Explain it," he said could be used for placement/assessment. If you would like a copy of his 21-page handout about the "Snapshot Test Words," please let me know.
If you want to explore more of Dr. Marzano's work, you can go online and check out his website at http://marzanoresearch.com/site/.
(To be continued.)
No comments:
Post a Comment