Over All Reaction: BIG THUMBS UP!
I really enjoyed keeping this vocabulary blog over the past semester. I've had to participate in "word learning" activities before, and I can honestly say I've disliked every single one of them, even those actives following a vocabulary self selection model. I did like this way of learning new words, largely impart because I was already sold on blogging.
Using a blog allowed me to be more creative with my learning and more interactive. I was able to engage with the vocab words in a fuller capacity than if I had to look up the definition and record it in a notebook. I appreciated the freedom to choose words from any situation, as well as the two word requirement. I really liked how my learning of new words was not private, but rather a shared experience.
Since starting this blog, I have become more aware of words I do not fully understand. I don't always stop to figure the word out, but at least I'm no longer simply skipping over the term. I'm also more interested in learning new words... I'm just looking for the time to do this! As I've become more word conscious, I've noticed my mystery words come from all over the place: conversations with others (or those I'm eavesdropping on), science videos I show my students, books I read for pleasure (specifically Christopher Moore). I plan to continue devoting some time to learning new words, maybe I'll continue with this blog, maybe through working with my students and their blogs, but I would like to become more articulate.
Reading-to-Learn and Writing-to-Learn
Keeping this blog has influenced my ability in reading-to-learn as well as writing-to-learn. When I come across words from our VSS tests in outside texts or situations, I now have a fuller understanding of what the meaning is of the text. Often times, the vocab term I came across was not imperative to the message contained in the sentence, however it did add a deeper shade of meaning. The message was a bit more detailed. In terms of writing, using the blog to learn the new vocab was influential because I had to reflect on the many facets of knowing a word in my posts. Considering the context of the word, where I heard it, how it was used, how well I knew it, the definition, a picture to show this definition, and finally my reflection on the term caused me to analyze the word as well as synthesize my understanding of the term from various texts. Both of these tasks require higher-order thinking, but to top this, I than had to reflect to a public audience, which forced me to think even more about the message I wanted to convey. Lastly, and I think this falls more under writing than reading, my exposure to these new vocabulary words has allowed me to write more precise messages. For example, because of this project I feel like I FINALLY have an understanding of the difference between affect and effect. While this may seem ridiculous, I've gotten by all these years not really understanding when to use affect because I usually just didn't use it, and when I have, I don't think any one caught if I was using it correctly! Now I use the word affect (and I'm pretty sure I'm using it correctly) where as in the past I would have just rearranged my sentence (possibly into a poorer version) than attempting to use a term I wasn't sure of.
The VSS Tests:
I really liked the VSS tests. This may sound kind of sick, but I actually thought they were fun! I especially enjoyed the final section of the last test with the pictures. I had a great time trying to come up with a way to incorporate the vocabulary terms into one sentence. I thought the VSS tests were fair and a much better assessment than the worn out "match the term with the definition" quiz. I haven't figured it out yet, but I will definitely incorporate the VSS in my own classes some day.
Final Thoughts: This has been the best vocab assignment I've been forced to partake in:) I feel like I actually learned something, and had an interesting time doing so. I was inspired by this project and would like to continue learning words in some way. Furthermore, I'm going to incorporate a project like this in my own classes to promote writing-to-learn, reading-to-learn and word awareness.
