The Garden School Tattler

In a world desperate for the extraordinary, we learned this week about taking a traditional and extraordinary approach to teaching.

We had a wonderful time at the Department of Education Conference. We sat in classrooms for hours learning lots of really valuable things and gleaned many ideas for our little school. I think parents will see some BIG changes.

The Garden School is a good school, but as we agreed on the way up to Indianapolis, there is always a better mouse trap.

The focus of this reading workshop was vocabulary. The premise is: if a child is not familiar with tier 2 vocabulary, he will not read well. He will be constantly skipping over or looking up words and it will limit his reading fluency. What are the tier 2 vocabulary words? They are words like obnoxious, ferocious, dramatic, facetious, oblong, grapnel... or any word that is low usage.

People fly through conversation that is easy on the brain and refrain from using really descriptive words or colorful descriptions. We rarely use a tier 2 word in conversation. If you add up all you say in a day, your tier 2 words would be fairly limited. But in your reading life, those words are present, and in a growing child's reading life, those words - rarely heard- become a stumbling block.

Children are supposed to hear these words in the world - one of those world places is the classroom. Now there are all kinds of words - words that describe, words that move, words that apply to bits and parts, words that illustrate, words that direct and many other words. Our new job is to present those words to your children every single day.

Instead of reading a story, the teacher will read through the book and pick out the tier 2 words and bring them to the children's attention. But just telling a child what the word means won't make him learn. Studies show that a robust approach to teaching while using a repetition of 8-12 times will actually allow a child to remember a word and be able to use it. He must play with the word and make it belong to him.

Every single subject ( geography, social studies, science, health, art, music, theatre and drawing) need to engage a child in the words that bring that subject to life and use.

Too often we assume that children understand want we say and how we say it. One of the things that we have done since our creation is to provide our children with a growing vocabulary, but using words and saying words is not enough. Providing children with an opportunity to "own" these words at a very early age is the goal.

We will need your help in using our new vocabulary words with your children. We will be creating a word wall with words we encourage your children to "own." Please take a look every day and take one of these words home (in your head) and play word games with your child.

And just a little BTW info for parents who love this kind of thing, we were able to divulge information about the GS at the conference, and we were a shining light. One principal said, "I wish your program was at my school." Another professor from Pennsylvania said, "I want to send my grandchildren to your school."

So now what we have to look forward to is more fun work and a better result in having these children learn tier 2 words. Please pay attention to what your children are learning and saying.