BBR Chapter 5- Strategies for Developing Vocabulary

By far, this chapter has been the most applicable to teaching foreign language, which consists almost entirely of learning new vocabulary.  When presenting new vocabulary, I always try to give context clues or act out the definition rather than saying the translation straight away.  Many of the strategies in this chapter encourage students to find the definitions of vocabulary by using context clues or by creating meaning based upon prior knowledge.  Some of the graphic organizers presented in the book gave me some good ideas of how to present upper level vocabulary.  It's easier to some use the methods in higher level classes when the base knowledge of vocabulary is better, but I especially like the idea of having students use more visual examples rather than writing definitions.  One of the homework options I assign has students draw a "pictionary page" of the vocabulary words.  As I was looking at the Verbal and Visual Word Association strategy,  I liked the idea of adding examples and counter examples to the visual description.  I'm really wanting to improve the way I present vocabulary in my class, and I feel like I can manipulate many of the strategies in this chapter to fit my class.