Vocabulary

I enjoyed the readings this week because it was about something I loved growing up, vocabulary. It might seem odd that I loved vocabulary as a child but it made sense to me.  I was and still am a terrible speller and have always been embarrassed by this fact.  When I was in elementary school, I would fail spelling tests but get good grades on my vocabulary tests.  I was always so proud that I could get a good grade on a test under the category of 'language arts'.
One of the readings this week, "Vocabulary Lessons" by Blachowicz and Fisher, talked about how "interacting with students, rather than reading as a performance, is more likely to build students' vocabulary."  I loved reading this because I got to witness this technique first hand while observing a kindergarten class this past week.  As the classroom teacher was reading a 'big book' for their reading activity every now and then she would come across a word that the young students might not know.  When she got to the word she would stop and say something like, "Sigh, that means to do this!" and she would then give them a cute example.  After they were done reading that page she had the children act out the actions of the bear, in this case the sigh.  It was so cute to see them realize they knew what a sigh was and use what they had learned. Vocabulary is SO important to reading and understanding!