I just received some questions from a
student about comprehension and vocab so here are the short tips I gave him:
Q I have a hard time with authors
purpose and compare this to that.
A Do you have a list of possible
answers ie persuasion, explanation, humor? A list is helpful because you can
talk about it with a friend and act the common ones out so they stick in your
mind better. With compare/contrast type questions be sure you know you'res
looking for 'same as' and 'different' (and key words are words like
"likewise" and "similarly", and "by contrast".
When I teach this I usually say really simple things like, “I am wearing pants
and similarly you are” or “I’m short, by contrast, you’re tall” and I get my
student to say some of his own examples (real easy ones) and we act them out
where we can (sitting/standing, in/out).
Q My knowledge of vocab words is also
really low
A Vocab can be hard because you want to
discover new words naturally but how often do we really consider vocab except
in school books? I usually start thinking about vocab by discussing the
advantage of having good vocab ie when you know big words you look smart! Then
we find words we don’t know and want to know, practice spelling them, thinking
up any handy ways of remembering them, then using them in sentences (orally).
Then we pick the hardest 5 to save. I have students explain them again and
write them out again . They take them with them, or I keep them, and we review
them next session. Oh, and any novel ways you can think of to remember them,
the better. Acting out is good, also drawing things in and around the word and
thinking of your own experiences or people the word describes ie My mom’s
frugal!. When you spell the word, look out for tricky syllables and highlight
them, eg in/CES/sant.
Q If the teacher says turn to page 263
in your book, read to page 266 and do problems 1-5...I can't remember it all.
A A quick review of note taking would
help you. In this example you would jot down something like:
Pg 263
2 266
pr 1-5
You might have fun thinking up your own
creative/bizarre/artistic shorthand.
No comments:
Post a Comment