Vocabulary in Activity Classrooms

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In many subjects, the emphasis is on doing rather than on reading and writing. In order to do anything successfully, however, you have to develop the vocabulary—the lingo—of that area. Whether you teach physical education, music, art, a vocational subject, or some other activity-oriented course, your students will learn more and like it more if you expend a small amount of time and effort identifying the key vocabulary in your area and making sure your students attach the appropriate meanings to the words and symbols. Here are some specific activities teachers in nontextbook courses have used to develop meanings for critical words.

Multimeaning Luck

In every field there are words with a subject-specific meaning for which students have a more commonly used meaning. Music class can be pretty confusing when the teacher is talking about keys, scales, and notes, and the students are picturing car keys, bathroom scales, and messages to their friends!  Common words such as rack and tolerance have very specific meanings when used in a mechanics class. Students who are becoming computer experts must realize that you can’t fish with this net, bet with this chip, and shouldn’t scream at this mouse!

Multimeaning Luck is a fun activity to review the content-specific meaning for words. Prepare for the lesson by writing down each word, with one math-related and one non-computer-related definition. (Overhead transparencies work best for this lesson, but you can also write the words on the board.) On the bottom of the transparency or on a part of the board you can cover temporarily, write one sentence for each word. Be sure to include in these sentences both subject-related and unrelated meanings, as students will have to guess which definition your sentence uses. If you use only subject-related meanings, they will easily figure out the system. Here is a sample lesson from a computer class. Begin the lesson by displaying the words and their two definitions:

menu           

1. list of available foods 

2. options in a computer program

boot              

1. footwear often used in rain or snow 

2. load an operating system into a computer

ram/RAM     

1. Random Access Memory 

2. crash into

virus             

1. an infection from a submicroscopic organism

2. a computer program that can attack other programs

bug               

1. error in a program

2. small insect

As you read each word and its two definitions, have each student write the word and a 1 or 2 to indicate a guess of which meaning you have used in the covered sentences. Be sure to tell students that doing well on this part of the lesson is simply a matter of luck. You may want to tell students this is a way to find out how their luck is running today.

When all students have made their guesses, display the sentences one at a time. Have students give themselves five points for every lucky guess and deduct five points for every unlucky guess. The person with the most points is the lucky person for the day. Once lucky and unlucky persons have been applauded and commiserated with, respectively, review the subject-related definitions. Remind your students that they will often find words in your subject for which they have other meanings, and that they must not let those words lead them astray but must try to figure out and remember the appropriate meaning.

Are you curious as to how you did with your guesses? If so, you will see one of the advantages of Multimeaning Luck. Once you have made a guess, you want to know how you did. You care about and pay attention to which meanings the multi-meaning words had. Here are your sentences: