 “An Ever-Expanding Universe”
Sara McManus
School of Education, University of Northern British Columbia
EDUC 400: Curricular Enactment in the Early Years with a Focus on Literacy, Numeracy and Fine Arts
Instructors: Dr. David Litz and Melanie Baerg
August 07, 2022
Margaret McKeown’s work continues to prompt me forward into pedagogical thinking. I suppose it could simply be because I had not thought much about the importance of vocabulary, or perhaps just that explaining words is something I naturally tend to do. (A skill I likely learned from my mother and grandmother.) I like to know the meaning behind a word. There is always a word for something, even though it can be highly frustrating when you cannot find the right one. McKeown stated it perfectly when she said, “language is an ever-expanding universe” (Lovell, 2022, 1:48:26).
It is incredibly validating when I find nuggets of researched work that support my subconscious thinking on something. I have witnessed two ends of a spectrum of educators when it comes to giving students feedback on their work. The extreme end overpraises learners for minimal effort, and the opposite end never provides feedback. One of my favourite things to do in a classroom is to challenge students that finish early is to “make it better” or “expand on ____.” I use that time to focus on those who need extra help or clarification to ensure they fully understand what we are covering.  In the Education Research Reading Room Podcast Episode #062, McKeown validated my thinking when she said, “You’ve got to help kids straighten things out…” (1:06:00). Although she is talking about vocabulary instruction, this pedagogical technique is multi-disciplinary. It is far too easy for educators to say, “yup – that’s a good job,” rather than to take the time to stop and explain the details and then expect more out of your students. I was formally trained to do this in practice when I travelled to England for my scouting Woodbeads II. Stopping to spend that extra minute to explain a vocabulary word through a different context to me is no other than needing to show a scout an alternative method to tying a knot or explaining the third usage because the first two just aren’t sticking.
I connected with and appreciated McKeown’s acknowledgement that all kids wouldn’t be able to learn new wouldn’t necessarily be able to learn new vocabulary words. She said:
“I wanna take the burden off of teachers for them feeling like they have to have all kids to know those words perfectly by the end of the week. Because even if kids are still having trouble with some of those words that’s fine. The thing is [that] you’ve given them a solid grounding, lots of opportunities. They’re going to keep learning that word. It’s not like that word is going to be stuck in that state, in that status for the rest of the kid’s life. They’re gonna [they’re] to keep meeting that word in [the] text. They’re going to keep building their understanding of it. So, it’s [it’s] ok if not every kid knows every word when [when] the week is over” (Lovell, 2022, 49:10).
I think this is true in all disciplines. A large part of our mandate as educators is based on the word “exposure.” I often think about the last term of my undergraduate degree, where I was stuck needing to find non-business elective courses to meet graduation requirements. I selected a course called, Introduction to Higher Education (UNIV 101), an easy A, right? After four years, I certainly didn’t think I needed to read a book called, Becoming a Master Student (late 90’s edition;). I was in for a rude awakening that term, and it is where I gained my biggest undergraduate takeaway. After all my hard work, I still remember it clear as day, the professor stood in front of the lecture hall and explained that when our time was done at the University, we would leave with no knowledge more important than that of how to learn. That lecture transformed my perception of education from there on out. As humans, we truly have only a “use it or lose it” capacity for being great at things in life. I was great at Macroeconomic Theory at one point in my life, but I have only the slightest knowledge of it now. Unless you keep up with something, it will likely fade. It only makes sense that vocabulary words fall into this as well. If I don’t continue to use the term “Anthropocene,” which I had to look up in the Wild Pedagogies reading (6 Touchstones, 2021), it will fade out of my “lexicon,” which is also a new word to me this year.
I found it helpful to listen to and read McKeown’s classroom resource suggestions, such as her ideas for index cards. Still, I also thought her concept of individual word record books for upper elementary students would be an excellent idea for a grade 6-7 class (Bringing Words to Life, 2013, p. 109). In the podcast, she spoke about dictionaries several times. She mentioned that they were “another tool to use” (Lovell, 2022, 1:30:27) while also going into detail about one of her favourite online dictionary sources, www.onelook.com. She describes this website as an online dictionary that brings together a bunch of other online dictionaries and sources that can help you pull together the meaning of a word in the context you are looking for (Lovell, 2022, 44:10). I think I’ll go check it out and if it is as good as she says it is. Maybe I’ll create a blog post about it – You can never have too many handy resources for your students!
References
6 Touchstones. (2021, Dec). (E. Kazi, Producer) Retrieved from Wild Pedagogies: https://wildpedagogies.com/6%20Touchstones
Beck, I. L., McKeown, M. G., & Kuncan, L. (2013). In Bringing Words to Life: Robust Vocabulary Instruction (2nd ed., pp. 82-102). New York: The Guilford Press.
Lovell, O. (2022, February 24). ERRR #062. Margaret McKeown on Robust Vocabulary Instruction. Ollie Lovell. Retrieved July 28, 2022, from https://www.ollielovell.com/errr/margaretmckeown-vocab/