I am a second grade collaborative teacher. Vocabulary is such an important part of our daily instruction. I have used various forms of 4-squares and other vocabulary strategies to teach vocabulary. This has been my first rodeo with vocabulary lincing. While I see the overall benefits and the success of the strategy, there is many challenges that I was faced with while implementing the routine.
First of all, the routine works much better in small group instruction compared to a whole group setting. When I tried to implement the procedure during whole group, it was a disaster. Many of the kids struggled to keep up, as well as understand, even though I was providing guided instruction. Once we started implementing in small group, it went much smoother with less confusion.
The other challenge that I found was the age level that I work with. While they are familiar with vocabulary words and looking up definitions, they had a hard time coming up with a reminding word. The more we done, the easier it seemed to get. Also, I have many perfectionists in my classroom this year. Some of the students had a hard time not having a concrete correct answer. They felt like their answer was never good enough and wanted to change it even though they were doing it correctly.
First of all, the routine works much better in small group instruction compared to a whole group setting. When I tried to implement the procedure during whole group, it was a disaster. Many of the kids struggled to keep up, as well as understand, even though I was providing guided instruction. Once we started implementing in small group, it went much smoother with less confusion.
The other challenge that I found was the age level that I work with. While they are familiar with vocabulary words and looking up definitions, they had a hard time coming up with a reminding word. The more we done, the easier it seemed to get. Also, I have many perfectionists in my classroom this year. Some of the students had a hard time not having a concrete correct answer. They felt like their answer was never good enough and wanted to change it even though they were doing it correctly.