Professional Documents
Culture Documents
earning to read is undoubtedly one of the most ideas (Lerner, 2001). Students with more advanced vo-
22 I NTERVENTION IN S CHOOL AND C LINIC VOL . 39, N O. 1, S EPTEMBER 2003 ( PP. 22–29)
When students have acquired a basic understanding of • For social studies terms such as democracy, republic, or
new vocabulary words, they will need additional practice dictatorship, each team may select or be assigned one
to reinforce and extend their comprehension. One way to vocabulary word. The teams are then given time to
1. Hold up a card with the vocabulary word printed in the Labyrinth. The Labyrinth was so
large letters. Say the word, and ask the students complicated that when the young men
to chorally repeat the word. and women were released in it, they
TEACHER: Labyrinth. What word? couldn’t find their way out, and the
STUDENTS: Labyrinth. Minotaur would find them and eat
them. Have any of you seen a video
2. Ask if students know the definition. Provide the game with the Minotaur in the
definition if students do not know it. Labyrinth?
TEACHER: Does anyone know what labyrinth 4. Encourage students to make up sentences using
means? (Take responses from stu- the vocabulary word by giving examples.
dents; if no one knows, continue.) A
TEACHER: Thinking of how confusing the
labyrinth is a maze. Can anyone tell me
Labyrinth was to those young people
what a maze is?
who were trying to get away, can you
STUDENT: It’s a bunch of connecting passages
think of a place or situation that might
that make it hard to find your way from
be confusing? Do you remember how
one end to the other.
hard it was to find your classroom
TEACHER: Right! So a labyrinth is any confusing
when you first came to this school?
or complicated arrangement or a com-
One example might be, “The new stu-
plicated, confusing state of affairs.
dents stumbled through the labyrinth
3. Discuss the vocabulary word with the students, of hallways until they found their
encouraging them to link it with previous learning. homeroom.” Can anyone make up an-
other sentence using the word
TEACHER: Does anyone know anything about labyrinth?
labyrinths or mazes? STUDENT: In the movie The Shining, there was a
STUDENT: I’ve played video games that were labyrinth of hedges.
mazes. And on Survivor one time, they
had to get through a maze before they 5. Allow students to decide on an action to depict
were caught. the meaning of the word. If students cannot think
TEACHER: That’s right. Another word for those of one, suggest an appropriate action.
mazes is labyrinths. In Greek mythol- The word labyrinth may be acted out by pretend-
ogy, the maze built to imprison the ing to wander around lost.
Minotaur at Crete was named the
Labyrinth. The Minotaur was a monster 6. Review the newly introduced words by calling
with a bull’s head and a man’s body. them out, and have students respond by acting
Every year, according to legend, the out the meanings, stating the definitions, and
Cretans sacrificed seven young men using the word in a sentence.
and seven maidens to the Minotaur in