Lauren Coggins

4 November 2016
Teaching Vocabulary Reflection
STEP 1: When asking the other people in my group if they have ever heard of the
words williwaw or braggadocio, they were not completely sure about their
meanings. Therefore, I did not need to ask them to attempt to use the words within
a sentence. When I asked, people in my group came up with the following ideas:
Williwaw:
- Weak
- Silly
- A frog

Braggadocio:
- Braggadocious
- Confident
- Arrogant

Lesson: For my lesson, I tried to work with visual and auditory modes of learning.
Williwaw: In order to teach this, I decided to start off by writing down the actual
word and say it. Then I wrote down that it was a noun to give the group an idea of
the context of its usage. After, I wrote down its pronunciation to model how to say it
syllable by syllable. After pronouncing each syllable, I would have them repeat after
me. As a mini review, I wrote down the idea that they all came up with and crossed
off the ones that did not relate to the meaning of the word to show them if anyone
was on the right track; no one was, so I illustrated this by crossing each off, which
would be helpful in the case of any present, lower-level ELLs. After doing so, I
informed my mini class that I would draw to represent the definition and play a
guessing game. As I went on drawing snowflakes, wind, and a guy falling over, they
pieced together the definition. I did have to point out the snowflakes again to
emphasize that it is a strong, COLD gust of wind. In the end, I ensured their
understanding when they shouted out the correct definition of the word.
Braggadocio: In order to teach this vocabulary term, I followed the same pattern of
writing down the word, giving its part of speech, and modeling the pronunciation.
Just like last time, I also wrote down their earlier ideas and informed them that they
were all on the right track (for the first idea, I gave them the correct form of the
adjective of braggadocio; the second and third were kind of correct). After, I used a
visual approach by writing down part of the definition: One who ________.
Following this, I underlined Braggadocio, so that they would notice the root within
the word to figure out its actual meaning based on other words that they already
know. With this combination, the group filled in the entire definition and
demonstrated that they had a working knowledge of the word braggadocio.
What does this mean? As a teacher, I may encounter times when students (in
ESL, with disabilities, or in general) will not know some of the vocabulary. At times,
by merely giving the definition, it will not be enough if they do not understand other
words within the definition, so other approaches should be taken as well that

activate universal modes of learning, often dealing with the senses in addition to
the definition.