In this week's readings, Tompkins describes tier one words as words that would be used in a typical conversation. Tier two words are more academic words that you would use in writing or oral language. Finally, tier three words are more technical words. I had some trouble distinguishing between some of these tiers because to me, a lot of the words I would consider Tier I, but my students might not. I felt that the language in my book, "The Watson's Go to Birmingham", didn't have a whole lot of outlandish words, but here is what I came up with:
Tier I: king, kindergarten, elementary, flunked, easier, look, dirty, tied, punched, school, jacked, alive, pockets, smart, eye, lazy, messed-up, people, morning, skip, bunch, bus, mile, jerked, apple
Tier II: Bible, passages, recognition, humorous, melting, perhaps, appearance, mistake, clapped, important, disappeared, nervous, strange, accent, thanked, laughing
Tier III: god, demonstration, numerous, miraculous, introduction, intimidate, emulate, incapable, cockeyed, regards, Poindexter, thugs, protection, raggedy
Like I said, it was kind of hard for me to distinguish the different Tiers looking at it from my fifth-graders' point of view. I feel like they should have a lot of those words in their working vocabulary, so they could be used in normal converstation, making them tier I. I think it would definitely be easier to do this activity for a younger grade, or with a more advanced book for my grade. I guess I will see how good my estimates were for this activity in a couple weeks because my class is going to start reading this book. Did anyone else have trouble deciding how to categorize their words?
Oops, submitted it before I was done...I think it is important to focus on some of the harder words in the book, aka the tier III words, because they might not know what those words mean. I think they could still understand the book without discussing those words, but it may help them to be more comfortable reading it if they understood all of the words. More importantly, I think it would be helpful to go over some of the slang they use in the book. There are kids from all over in my classroom and they may not understand the different slang terms and phrases used throughout the story. Terms like "hooked-up" and "pulverized" might be confusing to them because the term is not what it is defined as in the dictionary. A student with English as a second language might not understand what it means when a kid got hooked-up with a cool bike or that the bully pulverized the nerd. So, there is a lot that could be done with words and phrases like that that can be ambiguous.
ReplyDeleteFor an activity on vocabulary development, I think I would have my students read the book and write down words that they are unsure of as they read. At the end of the chapters, or at assigned stop points, I would have the students discuss the words they wrote down within their groups. From there, they can see what each of them thinks about the word (more than likely someone else will be able to define the word for them). Not only will this help the student who was unsure of the word, but discussing it and getting everyone's point of view of the word may open up new meanings and definitions of the word for everyone in the group. After the groups have discussed, then I would open it up to the class to either say words they are still unsure of, or to say a word that they had trouble with or that they think others may have had trouble with. I think this would be a good exercise and that it would be useful. Sometimes it is easier for students to hear a definition or use of a word by a peer as opposed to from the teacher or the dictionary.
I had trouble distinguishing words for my book too (Number the Stars) but I had the most difficulty with Tier 1 and Tier 2. I won't repeat the definitions since you summed them up nicely, but mine is definitely different than yours Kelsey! Since I have first grade, the students vocabularies are not quite at the level of your fifth graders. I looked at your Tier 1, Tier 2, and Tier 3 words and I thought that some of your Tier 1 words would at least be Tier 2 for my students! For Number the Stars, chapter 12, I chose.....
ReplyDeleteTier 1: tripped, arm, balance, kitchen, door, dark, quiet, light, silently, bundles, house, closed, whispered, fear, jumped
Tier 2: grasped, regained, stumbled, meadow, scampering, gnarled, sure-footed, gleam, dawn, horizon, narrow, pried, heap
Tier 3: Denmark, North Sea, Norway
The words in the tier 1 category are words that I hear my students use, so I know that these are in their informal conversation. At the academic level, tier 2, the students don't use these words often but I hear others use these words when speaking to the students, so they may be beginning to form ideas about what these words mean if they don't already know. The tier 3 words are very important words in the book because they make up the setting and the background of what the book is about and where the hard time took place. I think that the tier 3 words are the most important to teach when discussing the meaning of the book, the setting, problem, and solution. All of these important concepts of the book relate to where they are and where the war took place. It's important for the students to understand that it didn't happen here, but affected many people's lives. However, the tier 2 words are important words for the students to understand when discussing certain topics or situations in the book. If the students couldn't guess what the words meant after reading the sentence and using context clues to guess, then it is definitely important to define these words for the students to better understand what is happening in the book.
Wow! You guys did a great job summarizing exactly what Tompkins was talking about. I want to take a second to apologize for my entry being late. I hope you weren’t waiting for me and it didn’t add too much hardship to your entry. I got caught up in some other projects and forgot about the timeline on this one. No excuse and I don’t like excuses. But, sorry.
ReplyDeleteAs we have done for most of the semester, I agree with Kelsey on almost everything. I have a fifth grade room and am reading the same book as you so I don’t see many differences. The only question I had was in regard to your last paragraph. You mention that you would have the students write down words they don’t know so they can be discussed for later. I like this idea, but how would it affect comprehension? Would you have them read the chapter again after they understood the word? Or maybe just the passage that the word came from? I get where you are both coming from though. It is hard to know early in our careers what is going to trip students up. I hope these are things we will gain knowledge on in the future.
I’m kinda mad I didn’t post on time now too. It looks like you took chapter 2 like I was going to Kelsey. It looks like we had most of the same words too. As a matter of fact the only word I would move for my class is jacked. I think for them it might be a tier 3 that they aren’t exposed to often. This is because there isn’t as much slang like this in my placement that I’ve heard. There tend to be few fights and the ones they have are very mild. Mostly just hurt feelings. Because of this I went back to the book and looked at chapter 8 instead.
Tier 1: notebook, subtracting, neighbor, rocket, garage, growled, mustache
Tier 2: junkyard, worthy, technology, instrument, automatically, reflection, squint, cologne, interpretations
Tier 3: cut up, chrome, scientifically, mathematically, civilization, shaving soap, seniority, blanged, record player
The one I found most interesting in this list is I thought I would have to move record player to tier 3. I’m wondering just how many of the students in my class would know what one is or why it would be very unusual to have one in a car. I guess this helps me realize that words are going to move over time and trough disuse too.