Personal Inquiry and Vocabulary

Reflection Over Implementation When trying new things, there are always going to be successes and failures. What we learn from the successes and failures is how we learn, grow, and create new pathways for our students. I’m thankful to have gracious students who were appreciative of trying new things, even when they didn’t go according to plan. From this implementation plan I have learned that I still have a lot to learn about supporting 21st Century Literacy skills in the classroom setting. In regards to these skills, I need to allow students to explore and create with more independence, which can be difficult for teachers to do, as we have a tendency to not want to “let go of control”. I will now detail specific strengths and weaknesses observed throughout our Personal Digital Inquiry unit: Strengths: Students are (mostly) successful in their use of the Seesaw platform with recordings.  Using web literacy tools to gather vocabulary information. Creating representatio...

Incorporating Vocabulary Learning Activities Now we can discuss research based vocabulary learning activities that are best practices for student learning. Alongside explicit vocabulary learning, there are several ways to incorporate engaging activities into the classroom, including student collaboration and discussion. Many of these include new literacy technologies which students can also use through personal digital inquiry practices to seek vocabulary knowledge independently. This post will explain vocabulary activities, how they affect all students, and how students can take charge of their own language learning. In one research article i came across, I found the term, “Self-directed inferential learning” . This terminology, “takes into account the motivation, attitude, interests, and active engagement on the part of the learner and helps to explain how learners acquire new knowledge (in this case language) through simple exposure.” (Cetin & Flamand, 2012). Research suggests ...