Module 2: Activity 1 & 2

Activity 1 & 2: Module 2

As stated in the text (Weaver, p.56) I used visual cues to try to determine the definitions for these nonsense words. I have no clue what they really mean. This was difficult to do as I had no context to help me gain meaning. I can see how giving students vocabulary words without context is not the best approach to learning new word meanings. Words in isolation are definitely harder to define. Even though I am sure I do not pronounce any of these words correctly, I could have still gotten more meaning seeing them in context.

Creech- reminds me of screech, so some sort of cry or scream

Droogs- dragging something

Glazzies- looking or gazing

Goloss- to lose something

Malenky- a blanket or cover of some sort

Messel- a disease

Millicents- some type of currency

Poogly- ugly or unattractive

Razrez- a razor or sharp object

Skorry- a story or tale

Spatted- to spit

Zoobies- a limb on the body

After reading the first section of A Clockwork Orange I was able to get meaning to a few of the words with the help of the context. The first sentence clearly shows that droogs mean friends, school mates, family members, or people because it lists people’s names. Messel is used in a sentence tht shows it means an idea or a thought. The book uses the word as someone thinking of something and realizing everything was in the past.  Goloss is used talking about a singer and the goloss moves from one place in the bar to another, so this leads me to believe it is the singers voice. “He looked a malenky bit poogly when he viddied the four of us like that, coming up so quiet and polite and smiling, but he said :”Yes? What is it?” This quote shows that malenky  means a little bit and poogly must mean scared or frightened from what I get from the context. I was completely off on the definition of razrez after reading this section. I gain that razrez means to take apart or tear something because it said the book was hard to razrez because it was made when things were made to last.

This was a very difficult text to read to me. I struggled through the entire thing. I found myself skipping words and sentences I didn’t understand and just kept on reading. My definitions of these words may still not be exact but I used all the context clues in the chapter to help me determine meaning.

When I encounter unknown words while I am reading, I often do attempt to figure out the meaning. I do not spend too long trying to figure this out however because I assume I will probably see the word again in the text and may be able to determine meaning depending on the context again. When I finish reading something if I feel like I must know the meaning of that word in order to get full understanding of the text as a whole, I will look up the word. As you can see from my previous attempt of defining the vocabulary words at the beginning of the words, I usually find myself defining a word based on other words that look similar to that word. I do take word parts into consideration when determining meaning as well like I did in the word razrez. I thought this looked similar to razor which is how I came up with my guess of the definition, however this did not work for finding meaning for this particular word.

Helping students with unfamiliar words is a challenge. I do not think there is any right or wrong way to teach this. Contrary to that statement I do not think when a student is learning to read that they should stop reading when they come to an unfamiliar word to look up the meaning from a reliable source. I think they should attempt to read a large portion of the text skipping words they don’t understand first before going back and figuring out the definitions. Sometimes they will find the more they read the text and see the words used again, they will be able to come up with the meaning. I also tell struggling students sometimes when they come to an unfamiliar word to try to replace it with another word that they think may mean the same or similar thing as the unfamiliar word. I have found this to be helpful sometimes, where as some cases the students do not even know where to begin with this process. A child’s age and reading level are huge factors when tackling this process. I do not think a very beginning reader should be exposed to text with as many unfamiliar words as a more proficient reader should.