Book and Blog post 2

This book has great ideas! One of these ideas for incorporating writing strategies in social studies is called "List-Group-Label" This strategy allows the teacher to encourage brainstorming in order to categorize and organize the vocabulary and in turn relate it to the text in which is discussed. As the students utilize this method, they combine their prior knowledge of the concepts with help from the teacher and put the information into categories. Clark sates, "[because] most words are associated with other words [,] grouping these words in meaningful ways clarifies understanding of words and their meanings " (32).What this activity does is allows students to utilize their previous knowledge of the words and take that knowledge in order gain a better understanding of the new vocabulary that has been introduced. Pretty cool huh? 

Now let's see this method in action. First write a word or phrase on the whiteboard. Allow the students to think of words that could be associated with this word and write them down on the board. After the word list is generated, ask the students to explain what connects occur to each word. This part of the process will help eliminate any words that are unrelated to that key words.  Here's an example of a template that you could generate and hand out to your students: 

After the words are categorized and the other words are eliminated, allow the students to share their versions of the categories and organization of the vocabulary words. This will allow time for a group discussion in order to agree on the words and their relation to one another. This method could be quite beneficial because it promotes brainstorming, the students are engaged in the concepts and they develop a relationship within the terms. 

In order to gain a better understanding of the terms used in a social studies class the textbook suggests another method called "Vocabulary Self-Collection." This strategy allows the students to create a list of vocabulary words that the student is interested in learning the meanings more in depth. This method requires the student to do the necessary research to define the word in his/her own words. By the student researching these words they will gain more exposure to the words and in turn their vocabulary will increase and the student will become more aware of the words and their meanings (Clark). 

Both of these methods will allow your students to be more engaged in the vocabulary of social studies. It promotes better study habits such as researching, brainstorming and the ability to expand one's vocabulary and there is nothing more rewarding to a teacher than knowing his/her students are gaining the proper knowledge needed to achieve success. If used correctly, these methods will prove to be a necessity for an aspiring young teacher in the content field.