Teaching Word Skills
Teach a man to fish
and you feed him for a day.
Teach him how to fish
and you feed him for life.
--proverb
One set of skill that we can teach students early on is word skills. In short, having good word skills means being able to talk about language especially letters and words. The justification for teaching word skills to students is that word skills help students become better more independent learners. Here is a list of some important word skills:
(1) Being able to talk about spelling:
(a) asking for help with spelling.
(b) identifying the beginning letters of words.
(c) identifying ending letters of words.
(d) recognizing spelling patterns including digraphs and blends.
(e) understanding spellings corrections.
(f) talking about the letters of words.
(2) Being able to discuss the sounds in words:
(a) being able to ask for help with pronunciation.
(b) being able to identify beginning sounds.
(c) being able to identify ending sounds.
(d) being able to find and make rhymes.
(e) being able to segment and combine sounds in words.
(3) Being able to talk about the meaning of words:
(a) asking for help with words or phrases they don't understand.
(b) understanding definitions when they are given.
(c) giving definitions.
(4) Being able to discuss about the relationships between words:
(a) identifying and talking about synonyms.
(b) identifying and talking about antonyms.
(c) identifying and talking about roots.
(d) identifying and discussing related forms such as the past tense.
(e) identifying and discussing collocations and colligations.
This list is by no means exhaustive! In the first three weeks of this course we are going to look at activities that can be used to teach some of these skills.
Activity Summary: Secret Word
In today's class we are going to do an activity called secret word. Each of you will be given a secret word that you will describe to a partner. Your partner will try to guess the meaning of your word. If your partner cannot guess the meaning of your word then you can give your partner further hints until they do guess it. You will fill out all of the clues you hear from your partner in your activity sheet.
Language Highlights for this activity: talking about the letters of a word, and asking for and giving hints.
Homework:
Make a set of ten secret words similar to the secret word that I gave you in class. Write your 10 secret words and clues on one piece of paper and indicate what level you think these words would be appropriate for. (If you want you can also tie it into a content area for example colors. If I am teaching kids about colors for example the third clue I give will be a description of the color).
Note: Failure to hand in more than three homework assignments in this class will result in an automatic failure.
--Teach a man how to fish, and he sits in a boat all day drinking beer!