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Spiraling Vocabulary is a Winner

One of the necessary evils of being an 8th grade science teacher in Texas is that our students have to take the state-mandated STAAR test each year.  The state is essentially asking our students to remember 3 years of information on one test.  It’s a huge challenge to say the least.

One of the things that my partner and I have been doing this year that has really made a noticeable impact on students is that we have spiraled vocabulary throughout the entire year.  We teach a chemistry unit early on in the year and then expect them to remember it all by the time we give the test in April.  It’s just not going to happen for a lot of students.  We may be able to pick some of it back up in a review before the test, but certainly not all of it.  We have always spiraled questions back on our unit test, but have never done it with vocabulary.

This is how it’s looked in my class this year.  At the beginning of the year when our vocabulary list was pretty small (under 10) we would just ask students a word as they walked into the classroom.  If they missed it they had to go back to the end of the line.  It may be funny to them a couple of times, but when their peers start taking notice that they are always going to the back they seem to take it more seriously.  They began to challenge each other to get into the classroom on the first try.

Once our list got a little longer we started giving it as an additional part of our unit quizzes.  We just make a up sheet with all of the words and they have to provide the definition, examples, or anything that they know about the word.  I realize that this is low-level Bloom’s stuff, but if they don’t know the vocabulary they are going to bomb the test.  This portion of the assessment is timed to place some urgency on it.  Most students are able to do about 30 words in 10-minutes with ease.  We gave one today that is nearly 50 words and most were able to do it in 15 minutes.

We are then able to quickly determine by glancing at their sheets who knows what.  If a student has gaps in their science vocabulary then we pull them during tutoring.  They work on it by playing some games that we created on StudyStack.  Most of the students enjoy re-learning the words that way.  I honestly don’t care how they learn it, but that they learn it.

Just like in any classroom we do notice ‘frequent flyers’ to our tutorial sessions, but there are just as many students that have benefited from the spiraled vocabulary.  Those students that we have identified as reluctant are going to be worked with in small groups in just a few short weeks.  I know that we can pick some of these and get them to pass as long as they know the vocabulary.  I truly feel that when the test comes around in April that our students will be super confident going into it and I will feel at ease knowing that I’ve done everything I could to prepare them.  I’m flat out amazed at how quickly some of these students can fly through the vocabulary.  I think they are too!

Do you spiral vocabulary like this?  I’d love to hear your experiences in the comments.

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