Assignment 1, part D

Vocabulary work in the classroom

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This fall, my pupils in the 9th grade started to work with the topic India - the jewel in the crown. The School uses the textbook Seaching 9, which is quite outdated. Therefore, the book is rarely used, texts to work with are found elsewhere. The site ndla.no was used to find a text that could be an introduction to India.

The lesson started with a simple task:"Today we will start our work on India. Write down everything you think about when you hear the word India." They had 5 minutes to write, but they were stopped after 3 when they clearly were done. Then they had some time to tell their learning partners whart they had written. As the class got quiet, they were asked to share their knowledge the rest of the class. Notes were made on the whiteboard, as a mind map, but there were surprisingly limmited knowledge in the group. Out of 30 pupils, there are about three quarters that have English as their L3 language. Therefore, it was expected that they would need extra vocabulary training, but it was unexpected that they couldn't come up with more facts. They had heard about Bollywood, spicy food and that "they talk English there".

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Next, the pupils were given the vocabulary for the week. For each word that was written on the witheboard, they were asked to suggest the meaning before the correct translation was given. After some time, there was a list of 12 words in Engelish with a Norwegian translation and the pupils copied the list into their OneNote pages. The words to learn were all relevant to upcomming lessons and topics, as well as the text for this day.

After the pupils had copied the vocabulary list, they were given the text to read, and were asked to listen as it was read out loud to them. Since the level of the class requires it, each paragraph were explained, and some challenging lines were translated. This is a method that was chosen out of earlier experiences with this group, there are several of the pupils that are struggeling with reading English texts. Those of the pupils who needed further Reading to understand, were given an extra text on a lower level, which summarized the first text in a less complex language.

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At this point of the lesson, time had come for the pupils to actually use the new vocabulary in thier own writing. They were introduced to a task: "Write a short text about what you have learned about India this far. Use at least 8 of the new words. When you have written the text, record as you read it in OneNote". This task gives the pupils the opportunity to use the words in writing and practice them oraly as they read them. The advantage of OneNote, is that they can read only to the teacher, which feels safer to most of them. The time fell short, so some of them had to do the recording after school hours.

Finally, the pupils answered a short quiz using the voacbulary and the new knowledge about India. Many of them had learned a lot, but it would be interessting to try the same quiz in a few weeks to see if the knowledge is a part of their long term memory.

In addition, this was only the first lesson about Inida. During the next weeks, they will study colonization, Gandhi, Indian culture and Bollywood, and the vocabulary will be frequently used. The recordings are already evaluated, and comments are published back to the students. This gives them the feedback while they still work on this topic, and they can use the assessment as they continue their work. Furthermore, it gives a valuable information about which pupils who will need some extra guidance. 

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