Brain Rules

Brain Rules by John Medina is my current obsession. With a simple set of rules and the neuroscience to back it up, he presents the best ways to learn, the complications that we face in learning and some solutions that make perfect sense given the direction that we need to head in education.

This point, about recognition of vocabulary, in particular attracts my attention as a Latin teacher. I've sung the attributes of Wordchamp, but Brain Rules shows not only why it works but how to make it even better-something that is a constant challenge. We know that when students practice new vocabulary with a picture they hold onto the knowledge longer-but how do we increase the power of the connection and make sure that no matter the context, the learning is maintained? Well, the research here says that one of the options we should be making more use of is showing the picture, and saying the word aloud WITHOUT the text below the picture. Not every time, but definitely at certain times in the learning process. Why? The visual interpretation of the writing of the word can create interference-we can get a stronger, more direct connection by using the picture/sound combo especially if it's got a good emotional trigger.

More cards like this:


So how should I apply this? I have stacks of hundreds of vocabulary "cards" in wordchamp, and I need to examine them to make sure the picture is on the right mark, and also make copies of the sets WITHOUT the text, and assign the students the task of viewing/listening (which is easily done in wordchamp). After they hit okay, the student hears a voice say the correct word.

Next, attention and multitasking.

Light Bulb!

On Thursday the bulb went out. . . on my projector. It's ceiling mounted and the lamp light was flashing but it still was coming on at times before it finally died. Our wonderful Vartek technologist came and took it away (I'll fix it up there and bring it back here), but the bulbs are about $200, and we do not have the budget to keep them on hand in our building so we have to wait I don't know how many weeks for it. In the meantime I can use a cart with a projector, but it's not the same.

On Friday, with no projector, I called in the old-school methods that are tried and true-white boards!

Background: Level II teachers that I meet with (Hey, Ms. B) tell me that sight vocabulary continues to be a challenge for 9th grade students and I've used a variety of techniques to improve vocab recognition for the 8th graders. The students will recognize "ponit" he/she puts, but when they see "deponebat" he/she was putting down, they are not putting together the pieces that they know. Add a prefix, change the tense, use what you know to make the new word. Take it further, make it a noun, take it further, make it an adverb: things we do in English when we say "What is it? It's a message." "What are you doing? Messaging." "if you send it again, what are you doing? Remessaging."

I sent the children to the boards in teams, and they had 5 minutes to produce as many forms of a word as possible based off of a single root. We used words like "mitto" send, "verto" turn, "facio" make. Hundreds of forms flew out. Words they didn't know they knew flew out. Here is some video of an aha moment:


Winning teams received: puffy stickers. Yes, they work for puffy stickers because they know that it's worth their time.

During one class, a high school student delivered a jar of pickled peppers (not joking) from a high school teacher, and he was blown away by the hundreds of forms that these 8th graders were putting on the board. He sat down at first, then he rose and said "are you going to tell them that they are using comparatives?" I laughed, "yes, but I won't tell them it's a big deal." He high-fived me, and said, "I know how I got where I am." Before he left he added two words to a team's board-it produced 12 more that vaulted them into first place and I declared a tie.

Surge! Getting up-Vocabulary and more

Vocabulary. I teach a lot of vocabulary. Sometimes I get punchy about it, and that's never good, because then I don't give it the amount of repetition in class that is necessary. About a year ago in a punchy moment, I used Big Huge Lab's motivator to create class vocabulary reminders for my students-they were created with sarcasm but they came across as just silly, which struck a chord with them.

They were such a hit that the students started making them and sending them to me. It's always scary when kids are creating something with Latin and you didn't even ask them to. I've never made this an assignment, but they still love sending me pictures that are associated with the words that they are learning-and yes, I give them corrections and feedback. They always correct the work and resend it. Then I print it and hang it in my classroom, or post it in blackboard, or use it in a class lesson, and they point and say "that's mine!"

This particular motivator has the word "surgere" which means "to get up". My students love meerkats, so this is a winner, and the tagline is "it is time to get up and to play"-giving extra vocabulary bang with two complementary infinitives. Now hold on while I transition----

Whew, thanks for transitioning with me. I was in a meeting today in which the request was made of my building administrator to make a commandment from on high so that we, as department leaders, did not have to work an issue out with difficult colleagues-or challenge any of the status quo beliefs. It was the old," if the parent says we have to do it that way, blame them." I'm a fan of this technique at home. It gets my kids off the hook at such times as when a video chat goes too long and I hold up a note that says"tell them your MOM says you have to get off" and they are secretly relieved to have the out and someone to blame and not look like a nerd. At some point, we have to share the responsibility, right?

Anyway, the admin had the with-it-ness to say, (paraphrasing), Okay, I'll do that but you have to back me, too. You have to be willing to say that we talked about it and this is what we agreed to. Shoot. I thought "surge!" "get up", tempus est surgere et ludere, why do we have to ask someone to be the bad guy for something that is right in the first place?




If a colleague asks, "who ordered this", shouldn't I say, "Does it matter? It's just right."

No, it wasn't an assignment, and no one is making us do it. It's just good. So that's what I'm going to try out. Go, Meerkats!

Wordchamp Wednesday

After discussing Wordchamp with
esteemed colleagues (Kerry Daus and K.C. Kless)
I decided to establish Wordchamp Wednesdays.
Why? Because there are too many accolades
to pile into one post.


Over the past few months, I have kept referring to this article: http://www.encounters.jp/mike/professional/publications/vocabulary.html by Michael P. Critchley, and its profound statements have helped me quite a bit in fashioning formative exercises for my students.

Today, I will be addressing what he calls fine tuning the approximate meanings learned from a word list.

First, here is an example of a student's first try with a set of vocabulary. In it, you can see the student spent about 5 minutes on the words and got 17 right the first time. Wordchamp puts words that are missed back in the stack, and then the student has to get it right two more times in order for it to go into the "correct" category. So, this student missed 10 originally and then made the corrections.


Same student, next attempt. Look at the improvement.


Within Wordchamp, a teacher has access to a webreader which allows a student to hover over a word and see the meanings of that word in a dictionary-style entry. Because there are a variety of meanings provided, the student must use an approach that can elicit the best meaning for the word in context. When a student has memorized a single meaning from a vocabulary list s/he is at a disadvantage, because the flexibility in meaning is eliminated. A methodology which encourages negotiation of meaning helps the student to improve fluency.

Here's a picture of info provided by Wordchamp about a student's reading experience. It's showing me what words the student is having to hover over as she reads along in context. The student can click on those words and practice them, then try the reading again. This student practiced her list and did the reading a second time.

1st try:




2nd try, after practicing the words. Notice, ONLY ONE WORD is a challenge this time.


Anecdotal evidence: Students (17) who spent 20-30 minutes and assembled their own list of associative meanings for words in an original reading scored in the 4-5 range of proficiency as opposed to students (22) who spent 5-15 mintutes and did NOT assemble a word list, and scored in the 1-3 range range of proficiency.

What we are seeing is that students who "hover" and choose a meaning that has context, then practice that meaning, have a better ability to negotiate meaning when they are in situations where the original "memorized" term does not apply.

Wordchamp provides a visual rendition of which words the student "hovered" over, and also a list of "most missed" words from a vocabulary list. The teacher can also assemble contextual sentences to teach various meanings of the same word-the skill that we implicitly employ in our native language.

Furthermore, when presented with the information, even 7th-8th grade students understand the implications. As I presented data about 5 or 6 vocabulary words, the students verbally made the connection and created conditions (individually) for their own re-learning of the words. I'm looking forward to seeing what these children do with the work in 8th, 9th, 10 and nth grades!