1. Date and Reflection

The Word Mapping Strategy is especially useful for older students who need to quickly learn how to predict the meaning of unknown words.  For struggling learners, this strategy is important because they often do not have a large lexicon from which to retrieve words and they do not know how to identify parts of words that have meaning.  Implementation of this strategy includes five parts: a pre-test to determine students' skills, introducing morphemes and the strategy, practicing the strategy, determining progress with a post-test, and generalization.  The teacher is key in promoting success with this strategy during planning and preparation of the strategy and in bringing excitement and commitment to the teaching process.  This strategy supports the learning I am receiving around the science of reading in that it provides a way to teach the necessary skills in decoding word parts for meaning which lead to more fluency and better comprehension.

Strategy is designed to help students learn to predict the meanings of unknown words using word parts (prefixes, roots, suffixes). Two graphic devices are used: Word Mapping Strategy which uses the acronym MAPS (Map the word parts; Attach the meaning of each part; Predict the word's meaning; See if you're right!); Memory Table. 

Word Mapping Strategy is aimed at predicting the meaning of words. In particular, if a student cannon identify and pronounce prefixes and suffixes, she may benefit from instruction in the Word Mapping Strategy before beginning instruction in the Word Identification Strategy.

The following acronym is used for the Word Mapping Strategy:

Map the word parts
Attack the meaning of each part
Predict the word's meaning
See if you're right!

I was intrigued by the research outcomes as noted on pp. 3-4 of the The Word Mapping Strategy (WMS). In essence the study showed that students who have been taught the WMS can learn to perform the strategy. Moreover, they can learn the meaning of vocabulary words when they use the strategy. Finally, they can predict the meaning of significantly more words than students who use a similarly powerful vocabulary learning strategy. The WM students earned an average of 61% of the points available on the prediction test versus the average score of 24% earned by the LINCS students. 

Interesting way to work with words. I have used something like this before and the students had it in a notebook and anytime they came across a word they didn't know they put it in there.  

The Word mapping Strategy provides a sequence of steps to help students PREDICT meanings of words.

The word mapping strategy is a great tool for my role as a literacy consultant as well as a P2G consultant. This seems like a powerful strategy to use with students.