English teachers

I have been having a terrible time teaching vocabulary from a roots based vocabulary curriculum. Many of the students are failing from the beginning, and even those who do well on initial tests have trouble retaining the words.  Does anyone have any thoughts or comments.

I have found analogies to be a great way to teach vocabulary. It helps to get the students to think about connections. Holt Rinehart Winston has a good workbook called Vocabulary Workshop.

I've had the same problem with students not retaining what they're supposed to be learning. Is it an epidemic??

I think retention comes with hitting them over the head with the information and making them use it.  For example, students should be encouraged - or even required - to use their vocabulary words during class discussion.  I give participation points for it.  Then, whether taught in context or out, they have practice with the words.  Using the words themselves helps them own the words.

I had one student who took our Sadlier-Oxford vocab book home over the summer to work on. She improved her English SAT score 1000 points between the spring and the fall.

I have a vocabulary contest which pits class against class in usage of vocabulary words we have used.  It is rather involved to set up but once the year starts, it is easy to maintain.  You just have to be diligent in record-keeping.  Students are required to use the vocabulary words that we have studied (usually 20 a week, 10 for lower levels) in their essays, homework, and test answers.  The word has to be used correctly to count.  Once the word is used by a class, it is moved to the "used" board.  The class with the most "used" words wins whatever. . pizza, movie, class outside.  Again, record-keeping is key but the kids (10th, 11th graders) really get into it

For my middle school classes, we are required to teach Word Within a Word.  It's all roots.  I think learning roots is helpful and my best students do well with it.  But it is 100% memorization and I question the value of it.  The average and low kids really struggle with it.  It's cumulative, so by the end of the year, they've had like 700 root words.  As 8th graders, they get a new book which is mostly words based on the roots they learned in the first book, but some of the words are so obscure.  I just don't see the point.  I use the Vocabulary Workshop books with my high school classes and I really like those.

In reply to #5:

Sounds very interesting. How long would you say the set-up time is in hours?

In reply to #7:

The first year of the contest is a little labor-intensive since you have to set up the word tracking system and get all of the words from the year on cards and such.  I have everything in my computer and we hadn't (thankfully) changed vocab books.  I would say, depending on how many words you teach in a year and how many different classes you teach, it may take a few hours to set up the tracking system (if you do it manually) and one hour if you are just entering into computer program.  The most labor intensive part is setting up the contest board on the wall of the classroom.  This is done before school starts so time spent would depend on how elaborate you want it.

In reply to #6: Which Vocabulary Workshop books do you use? I have a set of 7th and 8th grade books from Holt Rinehart Winston. There is another Vocabulary Workshop (whose publisher I can't remember) that I absolutely despise. They are little orange books that I find very unattainable for high school students.

In reply to #5: This is a great idea. Mind if I steal it for my classes? I may even use a similar method in my French classes.