Remember to teach word finding cues before your students need to retrieve the words in their classrooms or in conversations with their friends. Teach phonological cues to help kids remember tough multi-syllable words like “discriminate.” I used a picture of a CD (“disc”) and an arrow pointing to the “rim,” followed by the digit 8. ” disc/rim/8″. Reinforce all 4 syllables and help your student “use the easy words to remember the hard word.” Refer back to my post of November 4 to read about the entire process.
This is a good time to remember that vocabulary that is familiar to us as adults may not be the vocabulary that is most familiar to our students. I was taken aback by a comment made by one of my 4th graders when I presented a lesson on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The story told about Dr. King and his followers. To me that was perfectly clear. But my young friend exclaimed, “I didn’t know they had Twitter then.” Huh? Then I realized “followers” had a different meaning to her than it did to me. A quick mini-vocabulary lesson on “followers” got us back on track. Likewise, when I first used the “disc” cue, I was talking about floppy discs. Vocabulary changes!!
And for anyone with a state inauguration this week, here’s a cue for “inaugurate.”
