“semantic network: Chunks of information connected in networks by associated meanings. Activation of any one chunk automatically ‘readies’ others that are closely associated with it, with lessening degrees of activation spreading from one network to another. Some scientists believe the semantic network may be the main structural component of long-term memory.”
Excerpted from: Turkington, Carol, and Joseph R. Harris, PhD. The Encyclopedia of Learning Disabilities. New York: Facts on File, 2006.
Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the concept of the idiom. This is a half-page worksheet with a reading of three sentences and three comprehension questions. As I have come to expect from the editors of The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, this is at once a short, cogent, and thorough explanation of the concept of the idiom and its uses.
Parenthetically, I have served many learners of English as a new language (though I have no academic credentials to do so) over the years. Idioms always caused these students a lot of problems because, as the reading for this worksheet observes, an idiom “…does not seem to make sense.” Because idioms, in their way, are excellent specimens of abstraction in language, they require interpretation. I’ve often wondered why they aren’t taught explicitly as such. Such a strategy, it seems to me, would cover a lot of pedagogical and cognitive bases, and prepare students for the kind of advanced thinking we theoretically want them to do.
If you find typos in this document, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.
“strategy: A plan or tactic to solve a problem or carry out a decision. In education, a strategy refers to almost anything that a teacher or a student does in the classroom—asking a question, reading a story, figuring the meaning of a word, planning the next day’s lesson, and so on.”
Excerpted from: Ravitch, Diane. EdSpeak: A Glossary of Education Terms, Phrases, Buzzwords, and Jargon. Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 2007.
“semantic memory: Memory for facts, such as the information that would be contained in a dictionary or encyclopedia with no connection to time or place. People do not remember when or where they learn this type of information.
Semantic memory registers and stores knowledge about the world in the broadest sense; it allows people to represent and mentally operate in situations, objects, and relations in the world that are not present in the senses. A person with an intact semantic memory system can think about things that are not here now.
Because semantic memory develops first in childhood, before episodic memory, children are able to learn facts before they can remember their own experiences.
The seat of semantic memory is believed to be located in the medial temporal lobe and diencephalic structures of the brain.”
Excerpted from: Turkington, Carol, and Joseph R. Harris, PhD. The Encyclopedia of Learning Disabilities. New York: Facts on File, 2006.
This week’s Text, from Barbara Ann Kipfer’s excellent reference book The Order of Things, is a lesson plan on boxing weight divisions. And here is a list as reading and five comprehension questions that serves as the reading and writing work for this lesson. Keep in mind, as I mention each time I publish one of these lessons, that this work is designed for students who struggle with understanding information presented in two symbolic information systems–in this case numbers and letters. Think of students who struggle with word problems in math classes, and you’ll have a clear idea whose confidence this relatively simple work is meant to bolster.
As this material deals with boxing–specifically the amateur boxing weight divisions used in the Olympics–I believe it will be of high interest to students, so I have tagged it as such.
If you find typos in these documents, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.
“strand: A group of related themes or concepts within an overall curricular area. For example, a social studies curriculum might be divided into such strands as citizenship, history, economics, geography, legal systems, political systems, and so on.”
Excerpted from: Ravitch, Diane. EdSpeak: A Glossary of Education Terms, Phrases, Buzzwords, and Jargon. Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 2007.
“semantic knowledge: Data stored in long-term memory regarding general information and concepts.”
Excerpted from: Turkington, Carol, and Joseph R. Harris, PhD. The Encyclopedia of Learning Disabilities. New York: Facts on File, 2006.
“semantic cueing: A strategy used to help an individual retrieve or read a word by giving hints with words of similar meaning. For example, it an individual is trying to remember the word compliment, giving the semantic cue praise may help make a meaningful connection to the word in question.
Similarly, cueing can be used to help an individual read an individual word. For example, if a reader stumbles on the word psychologist, an instructor may give the semantic cue a therapist or a doctor for your mind rather than providing a phonetic or decoding cue, such as ‘psych is pronounced sike.’”
Excerpted from: Turkington, Carol, and Joseph R. Harris, PhD. The Encyclopedia of Learning Disabilities. New York: Facts on File, 2006.
“story seeds: Ideas around which a student might build a story. Every story, for example, involves a conflict, so a teacher should provide a student with a conflict as a story seed and have the student create the setting, the characters, the incident that starts the conflict, and so on.”
Excerpted from: Ravitch, Diane. EdSpeak: A Glossary of Education Terms, Phrases, Buzzwords, and Jargon. Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 2007.
Once again, from Barbara Ann Kipfer’s sublime reference book The Order of Things, here is a lesson plan on motion picture genres. To deliver this lesson (and bear in mind that any lesson under the heading of The Order of Things on this blog was designed for emergent and struggling readers as well as students of English as a new language) you will need this worksheet with reading and comprehension questions.
If you find typos in these documents, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.
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