Vacca emphasizes that the academic language found within content areas can make the connection to a student a difficult task. There should be a separate, but essential lesson that breaks down those academic terms for students through activities that have them create the connection. The student will gain more understanding through understanding terminological relationships and the term’s relation to the content being taught.
Gillis highlights the research that has shown how students understand better with the development of their vocabulary through various strategies that provide results. Specifically through a “cycle” in which the student learns the meaning, context of the word in the specific topic, and its relationships to develop a deeper…show more content… From the strategies listed from p. 338-end of the chapter (Vacca and Vacca) or from Gillis, choose three and give a detailed example of how you would used that strategy to reinforce vocabulary in your content area.
Vacca’s OPIN activity would be a good strategy to help evaluate the prior knowledge of my students prior to the reading, but I would definitely do a second sheet after the reading to see what has changed and what didn’t. I would use this prior to starting a unit to get my students to get their wheels turning about the topic then after they share in their groups have them share some of their answers as a collective. Then continue on with the start of the lesson and at the end of the unit reflect back on their original answers.
Gillis and Vacca’s strategy of using categories to reinforce the understanding of relationship of terms as well as naming the ultimate connection to those terms to one. I would use this strategy particularly when talking about many political figures that will come up within a chapter. It can help my students remember who did what and remember the key term that highlights the overall event that perhaps is often associated with the individual such as Abraham Lincoln and Emancipation