Amazon
I would like my 7th grade English students to each have a dictionary and thesaurus. For one thing, kids love back to school shopping and having their own stuff. Both are inexpensive. Even before school begins, they may begin to realize that vocabulary and grammar will be an important aspect of their schooling. People learn by doing. By taking the time to look up words, find the meaning, part of speech, origin etc. and writing that down commits the term to memory with a better understanding than simply jumping on dictionary.com. A good teacher does not create meaningless tasks, however sometimes the quickest way is not the best way. During vocabulary, grammar and writing exercises the student would have these resources readily available to refer to. Practice makes improvement, thus a lot of vocabulary, grammar and writing activities should lead to a better command of the English language.
internet4classrooms
This is an interesting website that offers a lot of activities and ideas for class planning. People learn when learning is fun. When activities in the learning process are interesting and enjoyable students will want to repeat those activities and even seek to do them on their own time. Good teachers find ways to engage their students and spark an interest in the subject matter. Students develop competency with lessons and work in grammar, and with READING.
Elisa,
ReplyDeleteYou provided excellent rationales for all three of your resources. Question: what is your rationale for having students own a paper dictionary/thesaurus vs. using an online one?
GNA
GNA:
ReplyDeleteLooking up words in an actual book is an exercise which may help the students to learn the word better. They would probably notice the words around it, which would help to remember the spelling in the future. All the crazy distractions on line would not be there. They may not always have a computer available when working on a writing project, so should know how to use a dictionary and thesaurus.
Elisa
Elisa,
ReplyDelete"They would probably notice the words around it" is a solid rationale. I'm not thoroughly convinced, however do own an actual book dictionary myself!
GNA
Gotta give love to the books from time to time! I think there is value in being able to physically sort through things; whether pages, record albums at a tag sale, or just your own stuff! It's all about organization - in my opinion an important life skill:)
ReplyDelete