Although I seemed brain dead in class today I found the jigsaw project really useful. I got a lot of good strategies today. I also like all the easy assignments we have been getting, I can confess that all the recent hoops have got me tired of jumping.
Actually I found my jigsaw reading very informative, It was section D, Janet Allen's article about "Making Vocabulary Instruction Meaningful". Vocabulary seems to have been a hot topic in recent classes, especially since we all have a specialized content, that has it's own vocabulary. I am no math major but I am aware that it is key to know what the "sum of two numbers" and the "difference between two numbers " is key to solve equations, and that math students really need to know it.
Janet's approach seemed very useful, instead of focusing on definitions, and matching she was suggesting that vacab activities focus on word usage, context, relationships, and meaning. Having students predict materials content based on vocab. Using cross content vocab, and assessing vocab by using concept circle, and word relation activities. I can personally say when students ask me what a word means, I don't usually read a definition of the top of my head, I usually try to compare it to some thing that they are more familiar with. I just liked her approach, it wasn't rocket science but it was very practical. I hope my jigsaw group got this information from my discussion.
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