Vocabulary Development

Assignment 1, part D:

"The King’s Breakfast" as basis for vocabulary activities.

I had planned to work with this poem before Assessment 1 was handed out, so this was the starting point for my practical work with vocabulary development in my class. (Here is a link to the poem:)

https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-king-s-breakfast/Preparing for a performance of the poem as a dramatical piece at school in late October 2019, the 7th grade is currently rehearsing the lines of either the storyteller(s), the king, the queen, the dairymaid and the cow/Alderney. 

The poem can function as a humoristic starting point for discussions about British history, culture, traditions and literature, and it can hopefully be a humoristic “low threshold” way to recognize, learn, use and spell more or less familiar words: (King, queen, cow, a slice of bread, butter, etc). One of the goals in the process is to help the pupils to learn new words for oral and written comunication.

I started out quite carefully and traditionally with five words and one word chunk as homework for week two. When the day for the “vocabulary test” (which they know from previous years) came, I gave the pupils the words in English and asked them either to write a sentence with the word in English or translate it to Norwegian, or both. The halting results made me even more confident in my plan of finding various ways of putting these “words to work” and to find alternative “recycling activities” linked to the same vocabulary. Here is the first of my try-outs:

I came to class with a handout displaying words from the poem mixed with a bunch of other words. I read the poem loud and the pupils were to tick off the words they heard. This task demands only recognition, but it made them focus and listen. They liked it very much and the session was quite successful. Homework was to read the poem and start to learn their parts by heart. We found a few more challenging words in the same poem to learn for next week.

Next week, I tried a “spelling bee” instead of the traditional vocabulary test. The class were devided into pairs. One picked a paper piece with one of the words of the week, and the other had to spell the words orally with English pronunciation. Unfortunately, this was too difficult. The combination of remembering correct spelling and pronunciation of the English alphabet was challenging for them, and it caused a lot of commotion in class. My hope was that a “spelling bee”-game would give the pupils “ownership” of their own learning process, and that the “spelling bee” could give a hint of play to the vocabulary practice, but it turned out I did not prepare the class for this activity well enough this first time.

Week 3: I collected all the words we had practised during the two weeks in a new spelling task. I mixed the letters, so the words seemed unrecognisable and the task was to find the words and correct the spelling. Many pupils liked this task, but non were able to finish during the limited time we had, so they continued the next English class. I had the opportunity to give positive feedback to the pupils who had been working very well, and I got a new chance to motivate those who had been unfocused. After the second time I got an even better impression of the strengths and challenges of the pupils according to spelling and working capacity.
 

I have also tried out a “word definition task” from the same vocabulary, which suited the stronger pupils, and a (too) short session of “seat to board/hot seat” which all of the pupils seemed to enjoy.

I could probably have used assessment more effectively for the vocabulary learning in class. I had the idea that I did not want to continue the “assessment of learning” tradition, so typical of the vocabulary tests they had experienced before. I wanted to use assessment formatively, for instance with group work and peer assessment, and engage the pupils in their own learning process. I believe “ipsative assessment” for topics as spelling, could be motivating for this class. As for now the pupils energy and interest for learning need to be encouraged, so I must figure out what kind of tasks and assessments that works best for this specific group, and focus on the pupils development and strenghts for motivation.    

I could assess the performance of "The Kings Breakfast" for instance according to assessment criteria like clarity of speech, pronunciation, and communicative aspects like devotion and cooperation. 

Assessment of using the words in context with correct spelling, could probably be done by some writing tasks: First a less challenging task like: “Fill inn correct word” into the poem where the previously taught words are missing, followed by a more demanding writing task either as a task in class or as homework, for instance like:  
 

Either:

a.)    You are the king. Write a letter to the Alderney and thank her for the butter. Tell her about the terrible morning when you missed the butter!
Or:

b.)    What is the poem "The King’s Breakfast" about? Write a letter to a friend and explain which character you like the most: The king, the queen, the cow or the dairymaid?  

The pupils must use as many as possible of the words they have been working with these weeks, and formulate their own sentences.

                            

  "Butter" by Ruby's Feast is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0