Vocabulary Mini-Lesson
Name: Kaitlin Helstrom
Grade: 1st
Date: April 11, 2011
Mini-Lesson Topic: Vocabulary
GLCE: R.WS.01.10 In context, determine the meaning of words and phrases including objects, actions, concepts, content vocabulary, and literary terms, using strategies and resources including context clues, mental pictures, and questioning.
Instructional Objective (performance, criteria, conditions): Students will be able to identify 3-5 new words using context clues in the book
Materials needed: Corduroy by Don Freeman
Vocabulary words:
- carefully – preventing mistakes or accidents
- toppled – to fall over
- dashing – to move suddenly or speedily
- enormous – huge, extraordinarily large
- fastened – to attach or join
Connection | “Has anyone ever been reading a story and not known what a word means?” “Today, I’m going to teach you how to use context clues, or words in the same sentence around the unknown word, to figure out the meaning of that word.” |
Teach Mentor Text: Corduroy by Don Freeman Anchor chart: (Poster with steps for how to use context clues to find the meaning of an unknown word posted on the whiteboard at the front of the classroom) Step 1: Read the whole sentence. Step 2: Re-read the sentence and skip over the word. Step 3: Look at the words around the word. Step 4: Put different words in the place of the word to help find its meaning. | “Today, I’m going to show you how to use context clues to figure out the meaning of a word using the book Corduroy by Don Freeman.” “The first vocabulary word is ‘carefully.’ The sentence the word is in is: ‘Late that evening, when all the shoppers had gone and the doors were shut and locked, Corduroy climbed carefully down from his shelf and began searching everywhere on the floor for his lost button’ (Freeman, 10-11). Using the chart on the whiteboard at the front of the room, we just did step 1: read the whole sentence. Step 2 says to re-read the sentence, but this time, skip over the word and read the rest of the sentence: ‘Late that evening, when all the shoppers had gone and the doors were shut and locked, Corduroy climbed down from his shelf and began searching everywhere on the floor for his lost button.’ The sentence still makes sense without the word ‘carefully,’ so we know that it is describing how Corduroy climbed down from his shelf, which is step 3 on our chart. Let’s try to substitute the word cautiously, which is step 4, or substituting words for the word we are unsure of to see if the new words makes sense in the sentence. Corduroy should be cautious when climbing down from his shelf because he is a little, fragile bear and doesn’t want to get hurt. Let’s see if that substitution makes sense: ‘Late that evening, when all the shoppers had gone and the doors were shut and locked, Corduroy climbed cautiously down from his shelf and began searching everywhere on the floor for his lost button. ‘ Does that sentence make sense? When we inserted the word ‘cautiously’ into the sentence where the word ‘carefully’ was, it still made sense, so it is the meaning of the word ‘carefully’ must be similar to the meaning of the word ‘cautious.’ The meaning of the word ‘carefully’ is ‘preventing mistakes or accidents,’ which is the same meaning as the word ‘cautiously’ as well.” |
Active Engagement Pair and share | “Now it’s your turn to try using context clues within the story to find a new word’s meaning. We have four vocabulary words left in the story: toppled, dashing, enormous, and fastened. I am going to give you a worksheet with both the word and the sentence within the story that the word was in, and I want you to turn to a partner and try to figure the meaning using both context clues and the chart on the whiteboard at the front of the room with the steps for how to use context clues to find the meaning of an unknown word.” Worksheet with words and the sentence that they are in within Corduroy:
Next to the words and the definitions on the worksheet, there will be a blank for students to write the definition of the word. |
Link | “Today, I taught you how to use context clues to figure out the meaning of a word you are unsure of while reading a book on your own.” “When you go off to read today and every time you read, if you have difficulty with a word and are unsure of its meaning, try to use context clues first and refer to the context clues chart if you forget the steps before asking an adult what the word means or looking it up in a dictionary.” |
Independent reading time Individual conferences with students who struggle to read | Students to conference with: Craig, Charleston, Nevaeh, Niveah, and Jayden (These students have reading levels lower than grade level, and some cannot read at all.) Vinnie, Erika, Diana, Zoe, and Quincy (These students have reading levels higher than grade level.) Possible future teaching points: Each of the students have their own individual reading bins with around ten books at their reading level. Each month, when the students’ reading level is evaluated, the books in their bins either change or stay the same depending on if their reading level has changed. For those students who struggle with reading or those students who have reading levels higher than grade level, I will emphasize vocabulary words at their grade level of reading in order to provide examples that they can relate to by utilizing the books within their book bins in their individual conferences. |
Sharing Whole class discussion | All the students in the classroom will participate in a whole class discussion regarding their pair and share. The pairs will share on a volunteer basis, and the rest of the class will state if they had the same answers or different answers. If their answers are different, they will share their answers. |
Mini-Lesson Reflection
Teaching a vocabulary mini-lesson showed me how much my students truly don't understand the concept of vocabulary. My CT focuses on vocabulary solely through spelling tests, which are administered once a week. They have 8 words and 2 bonus words, and when administering the tests, she states the word, says the word in a sentence, and repeats the word again. Therefore, I thought that my students would somewhat understand context clues, specifically because giving the word in a sentence to help students understand its meaning is what context clues are.
I took the students out into the hallway, and chose to work with 6 students. I chose 2 students that are considered to be strong readers, or those that read above grade level, 2 students that are at grade level, and 2 students that are considered to be struggling readers, or those that read below grade level. When I read the story and re-read it a second time stopping at the first vocabulary word in order to provide them with an example of using context clues to help find the meaning of the word, the students were responsive and seemed to understand the concept. However, when I asked students to do the same thing by themselves with the second word, they all stared at me with blank stares. I modeled the second word, and ended up having to continue throughout the mini-lesson by providing feedback for each word individually. Therefore, the pair and share activity didn't end up working out either.
I think that as students move forward in their learning, they will learn more about finding the meaning of words by using context clues when they are unsure of its definition. Now, when a student is unsure of a word's meaning, they ask my CT, who simply responds with the word's definition. Most of my students are most likely unsure of how to use a dictionary, mostly because of their age and reading levels, however, using context clues shouldn't have been as difficult of a task as it was for them. I am glad that using context clues are exemplified in spelling tests by reading a sentence to the students with the spelling word in it, but I don't think that this benefits my students in the way that it should. I assumed that because students were being read sentences in this way during spelling tests, they already understood how to use context clues within a story to determine the meaning of a word. I think that more mini-lessons should be delivered concerning this topic, therefore, constantly asking my CT the meaning of words during Read-to-Self time would decrease, and students would utilize the given sentence during their spelling tests to help determine the words' meanings if they are unsure of the word. I think that this topic is crucial to both fluency and reading comprehension, and should be something that students start to learn at a young age.
All in all, my lesson went as planned with additional help that I wasn't expecting, and the elimination of the pair-and-share activity, which was simply done as a whole group. I think that the students responded well to the idea of the lesson when they were provided with additional scaffolding, but it was hard to teach a topic that the students were unsure about and not as confident in their abilities to complete the given task. I think that without the additional scaffolding, the students would have been frustrated and unable to complete the lesson. In addition, because of this reaction to my mini-lesson, I need to think of more ways in which to deliver a mini-lesson on finding the meaning of unknown words using context clues within stories in order to help my students fully grasp the concept both now and if future students I may have are struggling with the concept as well.
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