My Students Always Ask for Help!!

Do you have students who always ask you for help? Encountering new vocabulary was an issue for students in my Social Studies class.  Many of my students had one response for figuring out the new word: Ask me! So I developed a simple set of procedures for what to do when they didn’t know a new word. They quickly learned to try other options before they came to me.

What to Do When You Don’t Know a Vocabulary Word

1. Try to figure it out on your own.
2. Read the sentence or look at pictures to try to understand what it means.
3. Check to see if the word is in the glossary or margin of the book.
4. Look it up in the dictionary.
5. Use a thesaurus.
6. Ask three other students for help.
7. If nothing else works, ask the teacher.

Using procedures helped my students become more independent and take more ownership for their learning.  It didn't happen overnight, but there was progress, and that is a good thing!