Thursday, December 10, 2009

Sample Vocabulary Lesson Using a Wall Street Journal Article

Here is a lesson I'm giving my seventh grade son today for vocabulary. The method was explained here. This is shorter than the articles we usually use and I had to stretch to find words to use, but its content is of high interest to my son.

Article: Wal-Mart Launches Videogame War
By: Ann Zimmerman and Yukari Iwatani Kane
Published in: The Wall Street Journal
Date: 12/03/09

Vocabulary words in order they appear in the article:

temporarily
aggressive
industry
impact
competitors
steeper
systematically
anticipated
longstanding
eschewing
promotions
strategic
merchandise
destination
robust
initial
excludes

Phrases and Jargon

price war
market share
door-buster (doorbuster)
business model
sought after
of choice, as in "destination of choice"
flagship line or flagship

Wednesday, December 09, 2009

New Vocabulary Learning Exercise for My Grade 7 Homeschooler

Last spring I inquired of a homeschooling mother with certification to counsel parents about learning styles who also is certified with SENG (Supporting the Emotional Needs of the Gifted) about ideas to teach my now-seventh grade visual-spatial learner vocabulary words. I explained that past work in vocabulary workbooks with A grade if not 100% scores on the pages resulted in no long term memory recall of the words "learned". I wanted ideas for something else to do that would result in more concrete learning.

The suggestion was a two-pronged approach. First to use a quality workbook based vocabulary program to do the typical (auditory-sequential geared) learning but only do it part of the time, not as 100% of the lessons. The goal of that is to expose the student to words and word roots that may be helpful when taking the SAT. The second was to use every opportunity to draw words out of other studies or real life, which really isn't something that can be planned for. Lastly she suggested we read parts of The Wall Street Journal together, discuss the articles and pick words out.

Here is how I modified her idea for using The Wall Street Journal. We get a student rate discount for the print version of The WSJ that makes it much more affordable (and also gives us online access to the articles).

The term escapes me for this story (it has a name) but the stories that are most interesting and fun are the ones on the front page in the center at the bottom. Other times some articles in the Personal Journal or even Marketplace pique my son's interest, especially if they are about a new movie coming out, a favorite book of his or are about the toy industry. At present I am skimming WSJ for the articles I have a feeling he'll be curious about or will find funny at least entertaining.

Sometimes I present him with five or six and let him pick which article to use in his lesson. Other times I just pick it and present it to him.

I read through the article myself first and use a highlighter pen to mark words that I think he might not know. I use two different highlighter color pens , one for jargon or slang and another color for a word that I am certain will be found in a standard dictionary. Some I think he knows but I am 100% not sure about. I want him to know some of what I pick out. Some I know he does not know. I also highlight slang terms and jargon that I honestly don't know if he knows. (Often my assumption that he knows them is wrong so I’ve been erring on the side of caution by highlighting many of these terms even if they seem easy.)

I ask him to read through the article one time.

We discuss his interpretation of the article. Sometimes some of it has gone over his head. I talk about it a little bit but don't go too much into detail. I don’t get into a discussion of the words he must have ignored or misunderstood to have caused either his confusion or for the information to have gone over his head.

He then uses lined paper to write out highlighted word. He puts a Y or N to indicate if he thinks he knows what the word means. I was curious to see if he ever thought he knew the meaning but was wrong. He looks the word up in a dictionary book. (I want him to have more practice doing this as he has not done a lot of that.) He notes the type of word (noun, adjective, etc.) as a review-reminder of the grammar terms, then writes out the definition. He does all of the regular words first.

The next step is he either circles or crosses out the Y or N to show if he was right or wrong with his estimate. For example if the indicated Y that he did know the meaning of the word but after reading the definition he learns he was incorrect, he would strike it through. If he thought he knew the word and indicated Y and was correct he circles it. This helps me see at a glance if his own estimate of his knowledge base was correct or incorrect, this is relevant to explain why perhaps his comprehension of the article was off.

Afterwards, for a second step in the process, for the slang and jargon, he uses the Internet and Google to search for the terms by putting the phrase in quotation marks and the keyword ‘definition’. They are found on one of a few sites that do include such words and phrases and provide a dictionary entry for them, they are usually the top hits on the page. He writes those out as well.

If there are a lot of words this looking up of words and phrases is spread out over two days. We have been splitting it up as 45 minutes or more of copy work with close work is too much for my son to handle in one sitting with his visual processing disorder and the small print of the dictionary.

I'll share that sometimes my son thought he knew what a word meant but he was wrong. This negatively affected his ability to accurately understand what the journalist had written. Sometimes a word I thought he didn't know, he did know. And the few easier words that he was forced to look up seemed like a nuisance but provided him some self-confidence that he was not only working with words he was ignorant about or was wrong about his understanding of. Also some of the commonly used slang and jargon phrases that I thought he knew, he didn't know. You may be surprised to realize how much jargon is in American speech that we assume kids know.

On the third day I have him skim the vocabulary word list he wrote out, and then he re-reads the article. My hope is that new meaning will be revealed to him now that he knows more words or knows the real meaning of the words.

We then discuss the article. I try to gauge what he gleaned from it versus what I got out of it. I'll note if the article goes too deep into certain areas I will tell him we are not focusing on that but the other parts. For example there was a long article about collector's items that become a fad and work up to a frenzy but after the fad passes the items are basically worthless. A main discussion was the Beanie Baby fad and how scarce the items were and how some collectors actually thought that buying them and reselling them later may fund their children's college educations. Then they discussed how you practically can't give them away now and how eBay auctions of some formerly valuable Beanie Babies don't have a single bid on them. I wanted my son to think about this a bit as he is a collector and thinks some of his Yu-Gi-Oh! trading cards are actually really worth something. The article went into a discussion of investing money in certain types of financial products and that part was too in-depth for me let alone him to understand (that is my husband's area of expertise). The goal of the vocabulary lesson was not to make it a stock investing lesson so I just explained to him up front that I didn't want to focus on that section of the article as I didn't want him to get upset or overwhelmed about not understanding that part of the article.

I was aiming for one article to be done a week but we have not kept up with it in our busy time of the year for outside academic classes and other events. This is also taking longer to do than I originally assumed it would; I thought he could do it all in one day but was wrong.

I take the cut out article and place it in a plastic sheet protector sleeve with his handwritten work and place them in a three-ring binder. If I had found the articles on the Internet and printed them off using a printer I’d three-hole punch the papers and put them directly into a three-ring binder. As I write this I am considering shifting my son to do this work in front of the computer and putting the content into a word processor instead. I have not yet made the shift to having him do keyboarding instead of handwriting. My son has some symptoms of, but has not been diagnosed with dysgraphia. Perhaps that change would help him (and some other students; this is a common suggestion for students with dysgraphia).

Lastly I’m sticking with the paper book dictionary for now to reinforce alphabetization skills something that needs practice due to his visual processing disorder. Yes, it would be easier and faster to just use the Internet to look the words up but the other way is helping him with some basic skills including being forced to recall the first three or four letters in a word (a challenge for people with visual processing disorders) so I’m continuing that for now.

I agree with the choice of The Wall Street Journal as the newspaper to use for two reasons. The first is that it is the only newspaper we subscribe to, so I have it at my disposal. The second reason is that I feel that the city newspaper and USA Today are too dumbed down, they are written on an eighth grade or even as low as a fifth grade level (according to some opinions which I cannot verify as being valid). What I do know is the city newspapers usually don’t have many articles that are very interesting, instead they focus on crime and current event news that is both strongly biased as well as dumbed down. Others may choose to use The New York Times but frankly I don’t like their bias and we choose to not support them financially by subscribing. We only need a certain small number of articles to use so I just focus on using the resource that I have available to me already, and that’s The Wall Street Journal.

Today it dawned on me that what started out as a vocabulary word lesson has wound up being also about reading comprehension of nonfiction writing. That is a subject that is important so I am glad I'm killing two birds with one stone. The content of these articles can vary widely so they can be considered 'content' teaching as well. Some are deep into science, history, geography and other cultures while others are about sales, business, investing, legal issues, trends or even some other interesting topics.

These articles also made me realize that there are a number of topics of interest and help for a student (young person) to know about that is not considered a 'school subject' such as legal issues, copyright, marketing (to kids and adults), consumerism, ethical issues, and other things. One thing I note about these articles is they often go deep and show some complexity to the issue that presents a problem that is not so easily solved. I think we need to discuss this more with young people as the tendency to narrow down topics to imply that things are all black or all white and can be fixed easily and quickly with simple solutions is often what kids think about the real world when in fact that is a huge falsehood.

I hope someday that my sons will pick up The Wall Street Journal on their own and skim over it looking for articles they want to read. I want them to become readers. I hope the introduction to WSJ through articles of interest to them will show them that reading that newspaper is not scary, can be entertaining and informative and is worthwhile to do.

Resources We Use



Merriam-Webster’s Intermediate Dictionary



Google

Disclosure: I received no payment for mentioning these products. The products mentioned were purchased by our family for our personal use. See full disclosure statement, link is available near the top of my blog’s sidebar.

Tuesday, December 08, 2009

Carnival of Homeschooling Week 206 Published



The Carnival of Homeschooling week 206 was published today at The Homeschool Post.

I have an entry in this blog carnival.

This Carnival provides a lot of homeschool-related reading. Take a look!


If you have a blog or a website and write about homeschooling I encourage you to consider submitting an entry to this weekly blog Carnival. For information on how to make a submission, see here.



Enjoy!



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Self-Initiated Creative Writing

A story from a few days ago...

My twelve year old said he used his last homeschool assignment list. I was busy and asked him to print it off of the computer upstairs. He has not used Microsoft Word much but he knows enough that I could tell him the basic instructions to find the document and print it with out demonstrating it.

A little while later I noticed that he didn't come back downstairs. Guess what he was doing?

He decided to write his own fiction story using the word processor. I know this is a common technique suggested to use for either reluctant writers or those who seem to struggle with handwritten penmanship. I've not gone that route yet. When I figured out what he was doing he was on word 998!

Knock me over with a feather! He's writing! My reluctant writer was writing!

He is basing the story on Halo, the video game. He has just finished reading the Halo Encyclopedia cover to cover. He was looking at that book yesterday, showing it to friends, and he played it while at their house. The story was written entirely in dialogue, while Halo characters talked to each other back and forth and had a battle, all described in dialogue. It's not the format I find easiest to write or read but he pulled it off.

When my younger son heard what his brother was doing he asked to use our other computer to write his own story. He has decided it will be an entire book, not just one short story. Chapter one is 5961 words, to be exact. It is based on the video game Mercenaries II about a mercenary living in New York City. According to my older son, who read the story, it starts off almost copying a storyline in the video game then takes on a life of its own. (This later was the basis for a discussion about plagiarism and I encouraged him to try to use his imagination for new storylines.)

His story really surprised me because at age nine and only based on what he has read, he was able to craft a story that had some back-story then action that rose to a crescendo and then resolved right at the end, yet gave information priming the story for another conflict which will appear in chapter two. He was on a roll so did begin that second chapter, writing 1316 words so far, which I haven't yet read. This is his first ever creative writing piece, by the way.

I had a full day of typical homeschooling lessons planned for that day, since we had no outside appointments either during the day or night Both kids were on a roll getting lots of work done when their creative juices began flowing and they sat down and wrote. (The total writing time was almost three hours.); the rest of the regular lessons sit on the back burner while their muse was with them. Doing creative writing is something they hardly ever do and something they've never cooperated with me about having them do at my request.

You never know what things will motivate children. I had no clue that either of them were feeling creative that day, there were no outside signs that they had their muses with them. I'm glad they had the freedom in their schedule to go with the flow with their muse.

This underscored to me yet again of why our family should continue to avoid over-scheduling. When my children lack large open chunks of free time they never embark on learner-driven projects (not educational in nature, creative or anything else for that matter).

When faced with even a small amount of pressure to get to appointments in a day it somehow turns them into something more like a robot, plugging away at things until it's time to switch to leave to go do that thing. They also seem to avoid creative projects and tend to try to 'do the bare minimum' of what I ask of them. They seem to be less invested in what they're doing, to not get too involved lest I yank them away from it to get out to the next appointment. They act a bit more passive, waiting for direction to be told to do this thing or that, or to get ready to leave now, go get in the car, and so forth. They look to me more to be told what to do and when. I don't like that.

I prefer a slower pace, free time in our schedule, the freedom to spread their homeschooling work out throughout the day if they so desire, and time to do self-initiated projects (of any type).

Seeking just the right balance between scheduling outside homeschool classes and events and free time at home for home lessons and self-initiated projects is always a challenge but I keep trying to find it.

Inspirations:














Disclosure: I received no payment for mentioning these products. Our family purchased these items for our personal use. For more disclosure information read the disclosure statement, link is at the top of my sidebar.

Monday, December 07, 2009

Start of the Thorn Hailfly Knitted Cardigan Sweater



Four hours of my time last night and this morning: the start of my Thorn Hailfly cardigan sweater based on the Roving Moss cardigan in the Jane Thornley Feather n Fan pattern. See explantion here. If my blogging is light see here.

Disclosure: I received no payment to blog this. See disclosure statement in my blog's sidebar (at the top).

Sunday, December 06, 2009

Doing Versus Talking Versus Thinking Versus Planning

Just throwing it out there that sometimes a person is busy doing the stuff. Other times the person wants to talk (or write or blog) about the activity. Other times the person isn't doing the stuff but feels like talking about it. Sometimes a person needs information or encouragement or support in order to psych up the strength to do the thing, so the research must be done (or participating in online chat groups or whatever).  Sometimes reading about doing the thing is fun. Sometimes more thinking and planning is needed but a person is too busy doing stuff. Other times the thinking is in overdrive and the planning is great but it is not executed in real life.

I'm in one of those weird stages where everything is not in alignment. I'm in an unusually long period of "doing stuff" and the other things are falling behind.

I'm busy reading books, multiple books at one time, some which are review copies. I've finished some other review copies but I'm behind in writing up the reviews for them. I'm busy doing some of the activities I've taught myself by reading books recently, which is a very good thing indeed. I'm happily busy with my kids  (versus stressed out too-busy) especially busy with our homeschooling but some planning for what will come soon is not happening. And I'm getting tired of talking about some things, getting weary of blogging a bit, as I'm so happy and busy doing the stuff I usually talk about.

Well all in all what happens in real life and the real things accomplished are way more important than thinking about them, right?

Seen Under the Red Oak Tree




Red Oak trees produce acorns every two years. This was a bumper crop year. Some acorns were an inch long and quite fat!

Photo copyright ChristineMM. Taken in my yard on 11/14/09, Fairfield County, Connecticut.

Saturday, December 05, 2009

My Nine Year Old Son



Here is my exactly nine and a half year old son. He asked me to take this posed photo and it captures his true spirit. What do the color of his braces tell you about him? Can you tell that he to laugh and to make other people laugh? He's a really social kid, at first observing and gauging the situation before showing his true colors. He doesn't like to make social errors. He wants to fit in and to be accepted. Once he warms up and knows he is free to be himself he can be the life of the party. He makes funny faces and tries to impersonate others. He likes to practice speaking with different accents from around the world and the different dialects within the United States. The 80s Valley Girl and some hip-hop musician accents are his two favorites right now, with Scottish and Australian being two other favorites.

(Explanation: I listen to 80s on 8 on Serius satellite radio, he overhears hip-hop while shopping at stores or in the company of other families, one of his homeschool class teachers is from Scotland and Australian accents are heard on TV.)

This is my younger child who has never been to daycare or school. Looks pretty normal to me, given the accusation that homeschooled kids are weird or different or (fill in the blank).

Photo copyright ChristineMM. Photo taken 11/21/09 at Boston's Museum of Science while we took a break and basked in the afternoon sun shining in the huge windows of the restaurant.

Friday, December 04, 2009

Meatballs

Meatballs made by hand and in the process of frying in a cast iron skillet. My husband bought ten pounds of meat in bulk at discount prices and made a huge batch. The fresh herbs are from our garden. The recipe, I thought, was based on a Mario Batali recipe, but I can't find it online. It has ground beef, ground pork and ground veal, parmesan cheese, garlic and a small amount of bread, parsley and basil and black pepper. My husband now improvises the recipe from memory. This means, like so many Italian grandmothers, that no two batches of meatballs taste exactly the same.

It took hours to cook them in small batches. Aftewards he said he probably could have saved time by using our deep fryer. We  usually only use the deep fryer once a year, on Christmas Eve, when making fried calamari from scratch for a special holiday meal.

The meatballs are cooked rare or medium rare, then are frozen. To avoid tough overcooked meatballs, we choose to not make them gigantic (they are about 1.5 inches wide). We put them on a cookie sheet in the freezer to freeze separately then transfer them to a freezer grade zip top bag.  Later we take the number we want out, defrost them and put them into marinara sauce in a pot and heat them up. In that cooking process the meatballs finish cooking. They also absorb sauce that makes them even more flavorful.



Photo copyright ChristineMM. Taken 11/14/09.