Pete Curtis Philosophy of Teaching

I have moved house enough to have arrived at the following conclusion: the last box thats packed contains the essentials for daily living -- the maps, can opener, allen wrenches, keys, passports, etc.--that make this a veritable Swissarmy-knife-of-a-box for those in the midst of a relocation. Students command of the basic skills and knowledge within the discipline I teach should, of course, improve while under my guidance. Beyond these basic skills, however, I am seeking to foster important life skills such as critical thinking, the ability to estimate and evaluate, as well as discern truth from deception. I also have an eye toward allowing my students the freedom to synthesize their new knowledge and create something entirely new from it. In my classroom, leaps of logic and inspired creativity are causes for celebration. This philosophy is reflected in a vocabulary lesson which I developed for my sixth grade Humanities students during their reading of The Golden Goblet, by Elouise Jarvis McGraw. This work of historical fiction was a key part of the unit on ancient Egypt, but also served the Language Arts component of the Humanities curriculum well. Not only is the plot of this story engaging, but the writing exemplifies clear and simple style while employing a multitude of vibrant, upperlevel words to good effect. I seized this opportunity in several ways. Much of the research about the acquisition of vocabulary indicates that students can acquire new vocabulary for the short term or the long term, depending on how new words and their meanings are presented. Many of these studies have also shown that, where new vocabulary is concerned, students should be immersed and steeped in it if the goal is to achieve extended mapping of new words. The takeaway here being, although new words can be taught directly and in isolation, it is more effective in the long term if their sound and meaning are woven repeatedly into the fabric of students existing and expanding schema. The Golden Goblet is an ideal text to stumble upon new words in their natural habitat. For some students, this alternate route seems like more work, but for others, the experience is preferable -- as preferable, say, as grazing on wild strawberries while hiking is to choking down peas in the school cafeteria. Therefore, the first part of this vocabulary lesson was a chance encounter by design. Each chapter included five new words, which my students were tasked with finding during their reading assignments. In some cases the word was provided and a definition was needed, and in others the definition was provided and the word was to be figured out by context. Five synonyms needed to be found for every word, as well. I encouraged the use of technology-- including (at home) cell phones, ipads, and netbooks-- when hunting for definitions and synonyms.
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Pete Curtis
The following day, a quick review and compilation of answers was made. There was a comparison and conversation about the different synonyms that were discovered for the same word and the methods and sites that were used. The second phase of this lesson was intended to hammer the nail in. First, five minutes were used at the beginning of one midweek period to introduce the class to Vocab in the News! This is a fairly quick program. If words like meander, throng or treachery are entered into Google News Search, a veritable avalanche of living vocabulary words are found instantly. This exercise was dually advantageous, as it proved that the words under consideration were alive and well, while also demonstrating some of their nuanced meanings. The following day another 5-10 minutes was taken to introduce Visual Vocab, a review of the same words presented in prescreened Google images. As always (to stoke the fires of motivation, not light them) points were awarded and weekly prizes given out to students who could naturally and appropriately use a new vocabulary word during class. The assessment in this case and several others included synonym spills. These are designed to link up words into families and augment vocabularies through association and the extension of existing schema. Students are also required to write their own sentences for ten of the fifteen weekly words. I consider this lesson a success for several reasons. First, the sentences produced by students, on the whole, reflected a more well-rounded understanding of the definitions and meanings than in previous weeks. I also consider it a success because I saw several students using netbooks in study hall to ascertain the meaning of words, find synonyms, and items in the news following this lesson. I also--and this truly warmed my heart--had several students use vocabulary words from The Golden Goblet months later while in my math class! It is difficult to measure the effect a teacher has on his students. My aim is to make my classroom both comfortable and memorable. I am helping my students pack their box of essentials and training them to use the tools of inquiry, but I am also hoping to leave a handprint in the sidewalk of their lives by creating interesting lessons that resonate.

Pete Curtis