Emma Gilroy

Write a reflection about the process you went through with the students and how a student's
"understanding" of a word can exist on many different levels. Please be detailed about your
"lesson", and what instruction/resources you provided for the students. Did you achieve your
objective? What evidence do you have to support your decision? What does this mean to you as
a classroom teacher in terms of "teaching" vocabulary, especially in regards to ELL students?
Students experienced frustration and difficulty when exposed to the new words, which were
sparge and uxoricide. I introduced them to the words and asked them if they knew what it
meant. I then showed them photos of the what the words mean. From the photos, they were able
to better understand what the words meant. They each provided their best guess for the meaning
and all were very close. I provided an additional image for the word uxoricide, which helped
the students fully understand it. I provided them immediate and appropriate responses so that
there was no time for the students to construct incorrect definitions or any misunderstandings. I
tried to provide positive feeding and never told the students they were wrong. Instead I told
them that they were on the right track, but needed more assistance from me. I did achieve the
objective. I know that my objective was achieved because my students eventually understood
the information I presented to them. From this, I learned that teaching vocabulary may be more
difficult than I expected it to be. I will need to simply my information and definitions
sometimes. I learned that oral and written definitions are not really the best way to teach
vocabulary, but nonlinguistic representations can be very useful. I think that nonlinguistic
representations will be helpful for ELL students, as well as drilling, repetition, and practice.