Yuanhui (Kim), Gao

Feb 19th, 2015

High-Advanced Vocabulary
1. A brief description of the artifact: what is it? How is it used?
This artifact is from one of my student teaching class, which is a
high-advanced vocabulary class. The artifact is a notebook of vocabulary for the
students to take notes during the class. In the artifact, there are five academic
words, and for each word, there are four parts that student need to fill in, which
are meaning, synonyms, example sentences, and other forms for the word. For
this vocabulary class, I spent about 28 minutes for teaching, which is too much
for the students to receive. For this reason, I made this artifact to require the
students to take notes during my teaching to make sure the students can follow
my teaching steps instead of getting lost or distractive. I gave the artifact
(notebook) at the beginning of the class, and explained to the students about
what they need to do with the notebook, and told the students that they need to
use their notes to finish the exercise. Firstly, I gave three teaching examples for
each word, and asked the students to get the meaning of the word from the
context clues. Then I was going to give the definitions, synonyms, and the other
forms of the word. Thirdly, I showed more example sentences for the students to
know how to use these words in sentences. Lastly, I gave the students several
exercises that required the students to use their notes to finish.
2.

Explanation of what new ideas, information, or awareness came from

this artifact.
The notebook for the students in the vocabulary class is a good way for the
students to pay attention on the teachers teaching, and to help the students to
finish the exercises. In addition, the students can also use or review the words
outside of the class by using the notebook. According to McCarten (2007),
vocabulary notebooks can encourage the students to keep learning the new
words after the class. Good vocabulary notebook can help the student to know
what is the worth writing down. Moreover, writing can help the students learn
more effectively. Based on Pinola (2011), the act of writing can help people to
clarify the thoughts, remember things better. Asking the students to take notes
during my teaching could help the students to focus on the class, and help the
students to remember the vocabulary and main teaching points.
3.

Reflection on how this will impact your approach to teaching and

learning.
Firstly, when I prepared for this high-advanced vocabulary class, I felt a little
worried because I spent too much time on teaching instead of giving the students
chances to practice. I thought the students would get tired and distractive,
because I gave them too much knowledge at a time and there was no time for
them to absorb these new knowledge. When I asked my instructor, he gave me
this idea of the notebook for the students. It really helped a lot. The students had
to be focus on my teaching because they needed to take notes. I really like this
idea of giving the students the notebook for teaching vocabulary. After I used this

artifact, one of my classmates borrowed this notebook and designed another

vocabulary notebook for her vocabulary class. I believe this artifact is a very
useful and efficient tool for teaching vocabulary. I will keep using this artifact for
my future vocabulary classes.

References:

McCarten, Jeanne (2007), Lessons for the Classroom: How can we help
learners learn vocabulary. Teaching Vocabulary: Lessons from the Corpus,
Lessons for the classroom. Cambridge University Press.

Pinola, Melanie (2011), Why You Learn More Effectively by Writing Than
Typing. Lifehacker.
(URL:http://lifehacker.com/5738093/why-you-learn-more-effectively-by-w
riting-than-typing)

Notebook
1. Prolific (adj)

Meaning:
Synonyms:
Example sentence:
Others:

2. Bulwark (noun)

Meaning:
Synonyms:
Example sentence:
Others:

3. Sedentary (adj)

Meaning:
Synonyms:
Example sentence:
Others:

4. Frugal (adj)

Meaning:
Synonyms:
Example sentence:
Others

5. Decimate (verb)

Meaning:
Synonyms:
Example sentence:
Others: