Monday, November 18, 2019

Encouraging the Use of Dictionary for Vocabulary Acquisition


Dear Comrades,

Tenkiu veri nais for choosing to attend my mini sharing session. I welcome your feedback in order to improve on our learning and teaching pedagogy. 

Have fun!


Sincerely,
Mohamed Hizammuddin


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Q&A:
1. When do you get the students to use the dictionary (in a lesson)?
You can use Jejak Kata as an induction, once a week, or as a full lesson in Term 1. I've explained that students need to be explicitly taught on the how to use a dictionary and its benefits. Frequency of use as an induction or full lessons, depends on your students' learning profiles. The study (two key ideas) that I've embarked on was to track students' proficiency between January to November. At primary 3, students are given only base words. 


2. What will be the follow up of the dictionary word game?
The bigger picture is for students to use the new words in their sentences construction or composition writings, even in their conversations. Teachers need to track if their students are able to grow their vocabulary.

3. Which part of the lesson do you infuse this game into?
It depends on your learning objectives. Jejak Kata's two key ideas are to improve students' timing in locating words and also encourage self-directed and self-regulated learning.

4. What are the rules students must abide when using a dictionary?
Jejak Kata is designed to be a game-centric pedagogy. Guess what? You can change and add your own rules to give Jejak Kata more flavours and fun!

5. How do we then teach pupils to extract the base word?
Extracting base word of words is a skill. It needs to be explicitly taught in stages over several lessons. This skill is developed over time. You can put up posters in class so that students can refer to steps to identify base word.

6. How would you encourage students to make use of the words searched besides just increasing their proficiency of searching?
Please refer to answer for Question 2. Jejak Kata is one of many strategies in language vocabulary acquisition. Using a dictionary is also one of many strategies to develop the proficiency of a language. However, with the two key ideas of Jejak Kata, students will develop empowerment towards self-directed and self-regulated learning. 

Comments:
- This activity promotes joy of learning in our students. Good job, Hizam!
- Put a chart in the class to show current record - to further hype up the game.
- I think this is a fun way to help students to learn, with limitless potential for variety.