When and Where Did I Find The Word? As Carrie & I were preparing for our Reciprocal Teaching Discussion, We came across the word "cognate" and asked the class to focus in on this vocabulary word from our article by Kieffer and Lesaux (2007) entitled "Breaking Down Words to Build Meaning: Morphology, Vocabulary, and Reading Comprehension in the Urban Classroom".
What The Word Means? According to Kieffer and Lesaux (2007), a cognate is "a word with similar spelling and meaning in two languages, such as information and informacion"(p.142).
Level of Familiarity: I was first introduced to the term "cognate" during French I in 8th grade. I remember my teacher handing out a French/English Cognate handout on the first day of school. It was a great way to help build my vocabulary in French and it forced me to be meta cognitive about the cross linguistic connections that exist between the two languages.
Do You Want to Know the Word Well and Why? Yes, I wan to learn this word well because I think teaching kids how to recognize cognates can be very powerful. They are able to utilize their first language as an asset to improve their comprehension skills.
Do You Want Others To Know the Word Well, If So Who and Why? Yes, I think it is imperative that we have a developed understanding of this word. Many of our students are going to come into our classrooms lacking English proficiency. We need to target instruction for these students and teach them how to recognize cognate relationships and use them to build reading comprehension in English.
It is so surprising because the first time I heard the word Cognate was in my first Spanish class. I don't think ever in an ELA classroom was I taught about words with similar spelling and meaning. It was more of the process of just memorizing words. I agree that we have to teach students to recognize cognates in language.
ReplyDelete