Wilmington university

Instructional Materials

Practicum 3

Jordan Barton

2/13/2013

            Instructional materials are used in a variety of ways throughout classrooms.  With the abundance of choices available it can become difficult to decide which materials to use.  At the end of the day the best choice is the material or set of materials that work best for you and your students.  While progressing through your teaching career, a process of trial and error will allow you to decide which materials work for you and which ones do not.

            Poster Journeys are my personal favorite for instructional materials.  They can be modified for use in any subject and can be modified very easily to fit a teacher’s or class’ needs.  For a poster journey the teacher simply creates a group of questions pertaining to the subject at hand.  These questions could come from a text book, test, and the internet or simply out of the teacher’s head.  Each question is written or typed onto its own poster with another question’s answer at the bottom of the poster.  Each of the poster’s are also labeled with a letter in order to identify the poster.  During class students will approach a question, figure out the answer and then search the other posters for their answer.  Upon arriving at their answer the students will then answer the question at the top of the poster.  As the students move around the room they simply record the letters labeling the posters, this allows the teacher to record the route the students took.  The process continues until the students have answered all of the questions, eventually returning to their original poster.  The teacher can then look at the student’s answer key and find any mistakes with very little time or reading needed.

            Bingo is a great tool for vocabulary.  Although basic vocabulary lists and quizzes are becoming rarer, vocabulary is still very much a part of reading.  Bingo is a very simple game that everyone should know how to play.  The simplest way to integrate vocabulary into the game is by replacing the number with the desired vocabulary words.  Then instead of simply calling out the words, the teacher would read the definition of the chosen word.  This requires the students to recall the definition in order to mark the word on the Bingo board.  A list of words and definitions can be given to struggling students to help them with the game.  Although they can simply look up the definitions, this still requires the students to reread the definitions and familiarize themselves with the words.  Another modification could be to continue the game until every word has been used, thus allowing slower students to continue competition and for extra exposure to all of the vocabulary words.

             Memory is another excellent game/material for those struggling with vocabulary.  This game can be used to match words to definitions, synonyms, antonyms, or even phonetic spelling.  With all of these uses the game can be used for all levels of readers.  While some students master simply saying the words correctly through phonetic spelling, enrichment students can be challenged through increasingly difficult sets of synonyms and antonyms.  Through the simplicity of this game, each student can create their own set of cards to be used either throughout the class period as a directed activity, in groups as a game or during downtime to occupy idle hands.  Not to mention, students can be exposed to dictionaries through the creation of the cards.  Higher level students can be given a word list and then use a dictionary to find definitions, part of speech, etc.

            Custom crossword puzzles can be another excellent vocabulary tool.  There are several websites such as puzzle-maker.com that allow you to input your own words and clues to create a crossword.  These puzzles offer clues to finding one key word much like a vocabulary list in reverse.  Given that students have already been exposed to the words or have a list of them and their definitions, a crossword could be an excellent tool for remediation or practice.  The clues can be as simple as the exact definition for those who needed or more in depth, such as vague clues like “a verb, synonym: sprint”.  This clue could be used for the word run.  The clues could also be linked to the reading material through hints like, “John’s works as a _____ in the story” where the answer may be “blacksmith”.  This type of game can be used as an introduction to vocabulary words before reading a story, or as a summative assessment after a class read book.  Depending on how the clues are written, crossword puzzles can be used just for vocabulary or even for comprehension. 

            The W’s of Story Comprehension is one more excellent material.  From an early age students are taught to ask the “W’s” Who? What? Where? When? And Why?  Because children are engrained with these questions from an early age, adjusting them to comprehension is an easy adjustment.  For this activity, students are given a story on their instructional reading level.  Upon completion the students are given a number of questions stemming from the W’s such as,” Who were the characters in the story?”  Based on the level of the students the questions can be as simple or as complex as necessary.

            In conclusion, these are some of my favorite instructional materials; however they may not work for all teachers or classes.  As I have said before, there are literally thousands of instructional materials out there and there is no way to tell how they will work for you without trying them.  Finally, these materials are not cookie cutter lesson plans, all of them need to be adjusted and modified to meet the individual needs of the teacher and students.

Resources:

Activities for an accelerated reading program. In (2001). Essential Readin Strategies for the Struggling Readerdoi:www.texasreding.org

Instant online crossword puzzle maker . (2000). Retrieved from http://www.puzzle-maker.com/CW/

Stephen Decatur Middle School  Staff