Module 2: Activities 1 & 2

Activity 1

Term - My Definition

Creech- screech

Droogs- dogs

Glazzies- glasses

Goloss- gloss

Malenky- Malarkey

Messel- measles

Millicents- small amount

Poogly-Piggy

Razerz- razors

Skorry - scary

Spatted- spit

Zoobies – zombies

I had absolutely no idea what the words meant because they were not used in a context.  I just guessed their meaning from comparing them to words that sounded the same or had a similar pattern in them.  Most of the words that I came up with as definitions all start with the same letter as the original word.

Droogs=friends

Glazzies=eyes

Malenky=little

Goloss=voice

Creech=scream

Poogly=scared

In all cases I used the context of the passage to help figure out the word and what made the most sense to me.  For some of the words, I was able to figure out by reading just the sentence the word was located in.  For the other words, I needed to read the paragraph that the term was in.  Sometimes the words were mentioned more than once and then the definition was easier to determine.

Activity 2

·         I did not attempt to read the words printed letter by letter.  The directions said to read the words quickly and reading letter by letter is not the fastest way.

·         I tried to read the words by chunking them into syllables.  I felt this way was easiest because the words could be broken down into familiar sounds/patterns.

·         A few times I looked at the word and tried to read it all at once, especially for the shorter ones that only had two syllables.

·         I didn’t know the meaning of any of the words.  I have heard the word sarsaparilla before but seeing just the words by themselves gave me no correlation as to what their meaning were.

·         No, pronouncing the words did not give me any insight as to the definition of the words.  This reminded me of an activity that a teacher might give a science student or an activity to practice spelling words.  Where the students are presented with a term and they need to go look up what the word means in the text or glossary.

·         When I am reading and I encounter an unknown word, I usually skip it and keep reading then use the context of the passage to help me figure out the meaning.  A few times I have even looked up the word in the dictionary to get a better understanding and definition.

·         When teaching children how to decipher meaning of unknown words, I try to teach them the same strategy that I use.  I teach them to skip the word and read the rest of the text.  Then go back to the word in question and see if there is another word they may know that seems to make better sense to them in the sentence.  However, I strongly feel that young children/readers need to practice reading words that are familiar to them and are in their schema to develop fluency and a better understanding of reading.