A War of Words Against the Achievement Gap
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Sam HodgsonFifth-grader Jasmine Fisher works on a vocabulary exercise.
Posted: Sunday, May 2, 2010 3:48 pm | Updated: 4:06 pm, Sun May 2, 2010.
The dictionary was out of sight as Tara Malm quizzed her fifth grade class about vocabulary. The kids had already learned one meaning of "critical" -- careful and thoughtful deliberation, as in "critical thinking." But Malm asked them where else they'd heard the word and what else it might mean.
"Oh!" exclaimed 12-year-old Latrell Judge. "Sometimes after a movie comes out there are critics."
Slowly the kids cobbled together that a critic is someone who judges things, so being critical could mean judging things. Malm took it a step further and explained that more specifically, it means when someone believes that people or things are bad.
"Like Simon Cowell on American Idol," Latrell added.
"That's a good example," Malm said.
Another student raised her hand. "What about a critical injury?" she asked.
"Yes!" Malm said. "What's a critical injury?"
"A serious injury."
And the class figured out that "critical" could also mean "very important."
As they grapple with new words, Latrell and his classmates at Marshall Elementary are part of an unusual experiment in San Diego Unified. The City Heights school is one of two dozen elementary and middle schools testing a new and potentially powerful way to teach vocabulary that aims to conquer part of the achievement gap between children from poor homes and wealthy ones.