How Breaking Words Changed the Way My Students Approach Language

contributed by Alan Davson

‘Anybody who has visited my classroom is aware of how a lot I like phrases.

I educate multimedia arts, however I discuss phrases a lot that most individuals assume I have to be an English instructor.

Over time, it doesn’t matter what topic I taught, I saved noticing the identical sample. My college students
have been shiny, inventive, and succesful, however they have been usually simply thrown after they encountered
unfamiliar phrases.

Typically it solely took one phrase to derail them. Some college students might sound issues out, however when requested to elucidate what the phrase meant, they’d shut down.

Some college students might sound issues out, however when requested to elucidate what the phrase meant, they’d shut down.

At a sure level, I noticed the difficulty went past studying. College students weren’t simply struggling to
decode phrases. They have been battling language itself. They didn’t at all times have the phrases to
clarify what they have been pondering, to ask for assist clearly, and even to explain what was bothering
them.

That hole confirmed up academically, but additionally socially and emotionally.

I attempted the same old approaches. Phrase partitions, vocabulary lists, and video games. I made some extent to mannequin
stronger language throughout discussions. It helped, however solely to a degree. College students might memorize
definitions, however the understanding didn’t at all times stick.

The shift occurred throughout a easy second. A scholar bought caught on the phrase transport. As a substitute
of defining it, I broke it aside into trans and port. Then I requested the category what different phrases they
knew that sounded related.

They began calling issues out. Switch. Remodel. Transportable. Import. Export.

As we talked via these phrases and their meanings, one thing clicked. The room modified.
College students began to see that phrases weren’t random. They’d construction. They related. They
could possibly be discovered.

From there, it turned one thing we did usually. We began breaking phrases aside, evaluating
them, and connecting them throughout topics. Typically it led into conversations about historical past
or science or the place phrases got here from. Different instances, it merely helped a scholar unlock a which means
they’d have in any other case skipped.

What stood out most was the shift in confidence. College students who would usually keep away from unfamiliar
phrases started leaning into them. They weren’t simply memorizing language anymore. They have been
working with it.

What I got here to grasp is that college students don’t at all times want extra vocabulary. They want a
method into vocabulary. As soon as they understand that phrases may be damaged down and explored, the barrier
begins to return down.

In the course of the COVID-19 shutdown, I began eager about make this strategy extra
participating and constant. That course of finally led to the event of a card sport referred to as
SAYWORD!, which was constructed immediately from the identical classroom concepts.

After we returned in-person, I launched it to college students, and the response was rapid. They debated, challenged one another, and pulled from data that they had constructed over time. It didn’t really feel like vocabulary follow. It felt like play.

What started within the classroom has since reached past it. College students introduced it residence. Households
began enjoying collectively. What began as a method to help a handful of scholars was
one thing that labored simply as effectively round a desk because it did at a desk.

The core concept, although, hasn’t modified. When college students perceive that phrases have construction
and which means past memorized definitions, they start to strategy language in another way.

They turn into extra keen to take dangers, extra assured of their pondering, and extra engaged within the
course of.

For me, it began with one phrase on the board. For my college students, it turned a method in.