Word a Day - Word of the Day: Mammoth Opportunity for Learning
Almost everybody overestimates and underestimates.
For example, most people will over estimate how much work that they can do in a year, and underestimate how much work that they can accomplish in a day or a week.
Odd, yes.
And, teachers overestimate how much their students will learn by the "drop-dead high-stakes test date, and underestimate how much time it will take for students to "master" each component test objective.
Sidebar
Classroom Toolkit focuses upon higher-order thinking and teaching to students strengths.
Word of the Day Sites
Here are some "Word of the Day" sites…
How does "Word of the Day" Promote Higher-Order Thinking?
Answer: "Words of the Day" don't promote anything unless the teacher promotes them by…
- Working them into the lessons each class period
- Remembering what yesterday's word, and the word from the day before were, and working them into today's lesson
- Working words from past weeks into lessons and conversation
- Adding them to the "Word Wall" if in elementary school
- Having students add these words to their journals in middle school
What? You think that we are subverting the idea of a word of the day by reinforcing it on a "decaying repetition cycle?"
You're right.
And, you suspect that we stray further afield by integrating the word with multiple subjects so that they word develops rich meanings
You're right again.
And, we loose our opportunity to increase students' ability to memorize words in isolation by attaching meaning and enhancing the personal involvement that our students have with the word.
You got it!
Meaning, Communication, Interaction, Internalization (MCII or MCI2
The "Word of the Day" should be a daily reminder that a curriculum driven by high-stakes test objectives lacks usefulness. Rigorous experimental study would determine that such an approach generates substandard measurable student outcomes.
Perhaps it is a shame that so many "Newbie" teachers (and veterans that should know better) succumb to the seduction of focusing on practicing test objectives instead of delivering a real curriculum.
Daily Word is the Proof that Test Objectives Limit Learning
How?
Well, listen to the most common complaint about the "Word of the Day." That complaint is…
How are students supposed to remember a long string of words when it is time to take the high-stakes test?
This is exactly the issue about focusing on a long string of objectives.
Objective do not skills make
Learning seems to be cognitive, but Master Teachers know that learning is only minimally so.
The benefit of a "Word of the Day" strategy is that you can use the learning, memory, recall, integration, performance, meaning…and every other dimension to test instructional methods. That is if you are paying attention, and recording observations and results.
Sidebar
This testing is more like sampling than the assessment of the entire class.
Classroom Toolkit recommends that this sampling process be ongoing, quick and involve a rotating selection of students.
The most important strategy: You use the observations to change course, i.e., change to instructional methods that are delivering results.
For example: "What increase in learning occurs when your students enter the "Word of the Day" into their daily journal? What happens when they write a variety of short devices using the word? What happens when they gossip using the word. Etc.
What happens when you work the word (or a concept related to the word) into the Daily Inspiration Message?
What the "Word of the Day" strategy can do is enrich and broaden your students' vocabularies.
What the "Word of the Day" also can do is enrich and broaden your instructional delivery strategies.
The "Word of the Day" is an easy way to introduce students to newer and more complex learning routines.
What can we say about "Word of the Day" strategies? They Rock!
