If you're a linguist, one of my students, or one of my students's parents you will get today's title. Vers and vert are the Latin roots that mean turn. As I travelled up the hallways to my duty period I mused at a change I made to my pedagogy. Students have written me, over the years, thanking me for teaching them Latin and root etymologies. I have also read and heard a lot about the efficacy of chunking information. There's also been instruction to teachers about considering going a mile deep and only an inch across.
All of that pedagogical discourse made me re-examine somthing in my practice that I considered "working." -- my delivery of instruction. For nearly 20 years, it has been my inclination to explore and exhaust the curriculum expediently. After all, the state testing is always in the spring, so we must get all the eligible content in before then, right?
I wasn't so sure that was a good idea anymore, so I conducted a year-long experiment with my students. They did not know it until today, but I had been teaching them significantly differently than I had in the past. I used to go through all the Latin and Greek root words in the span of one marking period. Each day would be a new root with 10-15 examples, and once I had 15 into their notebook, I would proceed to drill and kill in preparation for the test. Students actually wrote me years later to thank me for that???
This year, I talked over my idea with my learning support teammate and decided that it would be better to use one root word per week and give one example each day. Repitition, recall, relate--- repeat. The idea was that, yeah, I could give the kids extensive tests at the end of each 15 word chunk, but how much of an enduring understanding am I building in the former model? Even when a kid memorizes brilliantly and achieves perfection, how many of these tools will she remember three years from now when she needs it most on her SAT reading comprehension test?
Today, after students completed their scholastic reading inventory tests, I gave them a crossword puzzle that included all thirty Latin root word definitions. In the puzzle, students had to write in the correct root words. My old teacher's heart was warmed by what I witnessed. Students did remember. Students flipped through their notebooks remembering when they had first encountered the root words. I let students work in pairs or groups, each according to their comfort level. The level of engagement I witnessed is what made my day brighten. Students engaged in discourse of not only what the words meant but also how they knew they had the right answer or when they remembered learning the roots.
No where was this more evident than with my Honors English students. They were nearly giddy with enthusiasm. I have results to my first reservation-- students do remember more for a greater period of time when spend an extended period of time with new information. My second querry is harder to answer. How do all of my students to that level of enthusiasm for their learning?
Group work seemed to go a long way to achieving the goal. Students became more competitive when they were attacking the goal--- finish the crossword before the bell so that all can learn the answers. For a formative assessment, I conducted root relays in class. I broke the class into five parts. Each group had a designated spot to answer their questions from and each student had the opportunity to earn points for thier team. When a teammate provided an incorrect ansewer, they were eliminated from thegame. When all members were eliminated, the sole remaining team became the winner. Students were focused on the win, I was focused on their learning.
This is the season where I begin to look back at the year and forwards to next year. The less is more approach is working for vocabulary but reading needs tweaking. I am researching how to enable online journalling or something similar to a tweet--- a chance for students to daily respond in a sinple paragraph (2-3 sentences) about the quote of the day or if they didn't want to write about the quote, they could tweet about what is happening in their choice- novel. If every student in my room has a device or laptop, students would be able to see the posts or tweets and repond to them real tiome.
