Incidental learning.

Sigh.

“Incidental learning” as in picking up vocabulary that wasn’t taught explicitly in class. Or an expansion of that – vocabulary items that were introduced in class, being reinforced in an unplanned manner outside the classroom walls.

“Incidental learning” as in the Deaf student who showed me the word “racist” in a comment on a website after the word “racism” was introduced while teaching the poem “As I grew older” by Langston Hughes. (Happy Teacher!) Or the Deaf student who worked on a text related to online shopping which included a reference to “Amazon”. She was sure it was a reference to the Amazon River, which she had learned about in Junior High School. No one in her family had ever ordered anything from Amazon and any casual conversations she might have encountered in the hallway or on the bus mentioning “Amazon” were not heard.

In short, Deaf / hard of hearing students need extra exposure to words in class. Repeated exposure to vocabulary items (mainly in written form!) in context and lots of practice!

With that in mind, I’ve been examining the Ministry of Education’s words list for high school students for ways to count and increase the number of times I use words from the list in context, in writing.

And I have formulated a plan.

Or at least a way to begin.

Refreshing a small unit I prepared from the elementary school vocabulary list (see below the horizontal lines) helped me decide what not to do for the high school students while sticking to a “re-entry plan”.

For the unit for elementary school, I chose a random set of 20 words and word-chunks from the list which I felt I was able to effectively place in a meaningful, visual context (I used two words not from the list as well). Then I created a visual lead-in activity (slideshow), a short film without dialogue that ties the items together, then the same film again with questions using the vocabulary items, ending with a Quizlet word set to practice with.

For the high school students, there is no need to choose a random set of words to begin with or to create the context. I already have a context that I spend a great deal of time teaching anyway – the pieces in the literature program.

Not only do I know exactly which pieces I will be teaching over the next three years, I also have no particular interest in creating activities that don’t tie in with the literature program and could take up time that I don’t have.

There are some vocabulary items on the list, such as the word “poverty”, that stand out.  These are words which I will put under the category of  Across The Board – words I can use in many (or even most!) of the poems and stories I teach.  Roger and Mrs. Jones from “Thank You, Ma’am”, are poor, as are characters in “The Treasure of Lemon Brown” and  “A Summer’s Reading”. The concept of poverty can also be related to poems such as  “As I grew older” and “Count That Day Lost”.  I’m keeping a special eye out for those words at the moment. I haven’t thought of a good title for the words that are relevant to only one piece yet…

So, what’s my first step?

I’m about to begin teaching the stories “Thank You Ma’am” by Langston Hughes and “A Summer’s Reading” by Bernard Malamud. I’ve started off by comparing the word list to the former story. Here are the  “Across The Board” words that I have identified as relevant to this story:

poverty / trust* /  to struggle* / to escape / an offence / an entrance / an exit / a promise / literature / racism / to steal / tone / setting / share / witness / to survive /  theme / to threaten / in return for / the main thing / to blame / to bear in mind /  youth / get away with / it resulted in

• Only  “trust” and “to struggle” (out of the above list) are in the text of the story itself, though the word “escape” does come up frequently when discussing phrases such as “make a dash for it” that appear in the story. “Escape” is, naturally, also a very useful word when teaching a Summer’s Reading, but I’ll get to that story in another post.
• Madam / God / Kitchen – these words are both in the text and on the list, but are “story specific”.

The next step is to go over the questions, activities, and exercises I have for this story. I have begun checking which questions I would like to rephrase or change so as to ensure that the items from the above list will be used.

FOLLOW THIS SPACE!

The Egghunt

1) Here’s the list of vocabulary items FOR THE TEACHER:

2. Here is the lead-in activity for the students. It must be done BEFORE watching the film.

3) The animated film (no dialogue, remember?)

4) Questions related to the film embedded in the film, courtesy of Edpuzzle.

5) A set of the vocabulary items on Quizlet.com

http://quizlet.com/44000574/egghunt-vocabulary-flash-cards/

Full disclosure: I’ve never began a post this way before.

There’s no real reason to continue reading this post. Hana Ticha’s lesson “Everyone is a Genius” has everything you could want a lesson to include – vocabulary, grammar, syntax, discussions, general knowledge and FUN! The quote chosen has a such a nice educational message too. So why adapt it? What happened to “If it ain’t broke don’t fix it”? Just go on to Hana’s post!

I had to adapt the lesson because I wanted to use it in my learning center for Deaf and hard of hearing students. Each lesson is for a jumble of  10th, 11th and 12th graders, at all possible levels. This activity is not for all them.

In addition, due to my students’ hearing problems, I would have to write out each clue, as they woudn’t be able to follow the spoken language. That would be cumbersome and time consuming.

In short, I needed a version that students could work on fairly independantly, with me guiding and helping from time to time (and then hopping of to help someone else).

So I typed up the lines for each letter of each word of the quote, so the students would have that information as a hint. I also added the first letter of most of the words (not the grammatical ones). I also wrote clues for about two thirds of the words. Some are very simple clues, others demand more of the student.

Here is the word document (two pages):

A Quote Challenge

I’ve done it with a few students so far. One by one (not in the same lesson). They are all students who enjoy a challenge, students who are curious.

They loved it!

Filling it in led to them asking great questions. The students tried to use “he” instead of “it” for the fish, which led to a review of the difference between  “it’s” and “its”. One very deaf student was puzzled by the word in the clue for tree “leaves” which he was positive was only an irregular verb in the past. The whole idea, naturally, of an “f” (leaf) changing to a “v” (leaves) is strange to him. Another student was sure that “everyone” should be plural but could tell that the number of letter spaces didn’t match the word “are” and figured out on her own that the following word must be “is”. The only word they all had trouble figuring out was “if”, even though they got the “will”. Perhaps I shouldn’t have a clue for it, and then it will draw more attention to the conditional form.

The students really enjoyed the detective work! However,they all needed my help in understanding what the point of the quote was. One thought it meant he shouldn’t go off on “wild goose chases” such as looking for fish on trees…

All the students who have done it so far are kind of “loners”, students who don’t always “fit in”, for different reasons. Once they got the point of the quote, they really approved!

There is a delightful article by Stephen Reilly in the March-April 2012 issue of “Voices” entitled “I remember you”.

Reilly says, regarding adult learners:

“Beginner-lever learners posses a wider and deeper word-base of English than they realize and unearthing this offers them foundations they can build on”.

I heartily agree that “unearthing” these words gives the students a sense of pride that they actually DO know some English and can serve as a “springboard” for learning.

Photo by Omri Epstein

However, when using internationally –known words, the teacher must be constantly alert for cultural interference. When the student’s face lights up and he “crows” “Oh, I know this word”, is that student ascribing the same meaning to that word in English that you are?

In the United Sates, a cottage is a very simple form of dwelling. Something you might have by the lake as a fishing retreat, very modest. In Israel you would hear someone say: “Did you see that awesome cottage he just moved into?! What a place!” Most certainly not a plain, modest, rudimentary abode!

The word  test in Israel refers to the written part of the driving exam. Students are often confused when they encounter the word in texts and try to find a connection to driving. As this meaning seems to be so entrenched I have resorted to placing little signs with the word “test” on the desks during exams. Having the word at the top of the students exam papers had no effect at all.

In fact, the word student itself is a problem. In Israel students are only those who study at university. A sentence describing a first-grade student can be very puzzling!

There are many more examples.

I would like to add a word of caution regarding use of such words as a tool for learning the sounds of the letters. Many words entered the language from English in a somewhat mangled form. How many people properly pronounce the letter “H” in hamburger? Many would swear that is an “ambuger”!

I’m assuming that this phenomenon is true in other countries as well, as it seems logical that it would be.

Can you tell me if my assumption is correct?

I was very impressed by Marissa Constantinides’s initatiative to gather lesson plans for raising awareness of the members of our society with special needs, but I wasn’t sure what I could contribute. After reading Vicky Loras’s post on this topic which was based on a poem, I thought perhaps this lesson I have taught may be of use. It presents a poem by a deaf poet.

Since I teach deaf and hard of hearing students the motivation for teaching this poem was not to raise awareness but rather to show them that there are deaf poets writing about things these students can relate to. Perhaps for a class of hearing students it will serve the purpose Marissa intended. Here is the lesson plan in three parts. The full poem can be found at the end.

Part One

I began the lesson by writing the following on the board:

Solo Dining While Growing Up

A poem by Curtis Robbins*

Line 1: When my whole family sat down at the dinner table:

The students and I translated the title of the poem, emphasizing the meaning of the word “solo”. The vocabulary of the first line of the poem is quite simple so most of the students went on to read it themselves. I then asked them if they found any contradiction between the title and the first line. Some students saw it, some didn’t – why is he saying he ate alone when it clearly says that he sat with his whole family?

I then pointed to the asterisk after the name of the poet and wrote on the board:

* Curtis Robbins is a deaf poet.

Immediately, ALMOST the students (THAT was amazing!) got it – the poet felt he was dining alone even though his family was there because they were hearing people and he was deaf. The poet couldn’t follow the conversation over dinner. Some students pointed out that his family probably didn’t know sign language. Interesting to note that about a fourth of my students have deaf parents and did not grow up being left out at the dinner table, yet they immediately recognized the situation. Many students who do have hearing parents said they didn’t feel like that with their immediate family but have had this experience.

Part Two

On the board we brainstormed as many nouns as we could think of related to dining, such as forks, napkins and plates.  Now the students were able to read the following version of the poem (with missing words) which I handed out:

Solo Dining While Growing Up

When my whole family sat down at the dinner table:

There was always

a lot to eat from corner to corner

There was always _____________

between forks and spoons

There was always _____________

between glasses and cups

There was always ________________

between napkins

There were always

empty plates and empty bowls

But the knife that laid between them all-

from mouth to ear-

from mouth to eye –

_____  _______  ______.

Part Three

After making sure that everyone understood all the vocabulary items I told the students that the same word was missing in the first three blanks. As a collaborative effort we brainstormed what that word could be and then filled in the word “conversation”.

Then we discussed what the last three words could be. I pointed out that it is related to a knife, so they were able to come up with “cut” but did not know “cut off” (which I explained). They easily understood that the poet was the one feeling cut off so we quickly identified the word “me”. Then I wrote the missing three words which they copied in: “cut me off” .

I left time for students to express their feelings about the poem and to share any related stories, feelings or thoughts but this part was important for emotional / psychological reasons only – it was all done in Hebrew!

Here is the complete poem.

Solo Dining While Growing Up