Module 2: Activities 1 & 2

Activity 1:

Definitions BEFORE reading the text:

Creech- an obstacle

Droogs- an animal

Glazzies- glasses

Goloss- type of food

Malenky- something outrageous and ridiculous

Messel- a muscle

Millicents- a unit of measure

Poogly- type of food

Razrez- type of sauce

Skorry- a story

Spatted- to spit or the act of spitting

Zoobies- chills through your body

When trying to come up with a definition for these words I really found myself thinking out a familiar word that these unknown words sounded or looked like. Some of them are just a wild guess but for the most part I really think I was trying to make a connection with the words, however, I was not very successful!

Definitions AFTER reading the text:

Droogs: I am thinking this means friends because the character gives names to the “droogs”.

Skorry: Fast or quickly. The text says “things changing so skorry these days…” I am connecting this to my knowledge of our world today.

Glazzies- I am assuming this means eyes. I was close in my assumption of glasses. However, in context the author is talking about the girls’ make-up. He says “rainbows around the glazzies” which when I think of make-up you add color in your eye shadow.  The word is also mentioned a little further “with his glazzies glazed…” I connect this with glazed eyes or eyes staring.

I am discovering the meaning of these words because I am using the context within the sentences that these words are being used and also in the sentences before and after the words.

Activity 2:

I tried to read the words mostly by chunking them into syllables. I think this is just out of habit and didn’t realize I was doing it until I actually thought about it.

I have no idea what the meanings of any of these words are.

Pronouncing the words did not help me at all. Even using the pronunciation guide doesn’t give me any insight into the meaning of these words.

When I am reading and I come to a word I do not know I first try to sound it out. I then, reread the sentence to try to gain any meaning from the surrounding context. Most of the time I can use the surrounding context to help me with the meaning of the word, however, I am never certain whether or not I am pronouncing the word correctly.

I think this experiment brings up several good points. The first thing is that we rely on context to help us identify and understand words. I have no idea the meaning of any of those words in that list. However, if I were to see the word in context I could use the clues around the word to help me discover the meaning of the word. Also, we do NOT have to correctly pronounce the word to get meaning. Instead we use the surrounding context to help use identify the meaning of the word even if we are unsure of the pronunciation.  I feel this way because I do this ALL the time when I am reading. And, I probably would not pronounce those words correctly, even after reading in a sentence, until someone verbally told me the correct pronunciation.

Conclusion:

Overall, I believe these activities really help me understand that in many cases we don’t need to rely on correct pronunciation to understand or comprehend the text. There are many times when students may stubble on words and NOT correctly pronounce them but are able to understand the text. This is possible because students (and us) are relying on the surrounding context. As readers I think, as these activities have proven, that we mostly rely on the context to help us “read”.