week 12 blog

Chapter 1

Tier 1: record, nervous, banging, clown

Tier 2: degrees, chuckled, adopted, embarrassed, passionate 

Tier 3: delinquent, igloos, blizzard

To help students understand this book, I would focus on the words clown, blizzard, chuckled and embarrassed. 

The only tier 1 word I think would need to be taught is clown, as some students may not know what they mean by clown, especially english language learners, as they are not referring to someone dressed up for a birthday party. The tier 2 words I think need to be taught are chuckled and embarrassed. Chuckled is a word that is used more in writing than in oral language and therefore some students may not see or hear it often. It is also a word that students would understand the concept of but may not recognize the actual word. Embarrassed is also a word used more in writing and that students know the concept of but might not recognize the word. The tier 3 words I would teach would be blizzard, as this is a word that is content-specific and is important for the reader to understand in order to understand the novel. 

In order to teach these words, I might have my students make word posters. On these posters I would have the children pick from the words I feel they need to learn. Once they pick the word, they would have to find the words meaning, either by looking it up in the dictionary or looking it up on the internet. Once they find a definition, they can draw and color a picture to illustrate their word. Then students can volunteer to read the definition they found and explain how their picture visualizes the meaning of the word.