Co-Constructing a Class Lexicon: A Semester-Long Project

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"Dictionary" by greeblie is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Resource Description

This lexicon is a semester-long examination into and expansion of course terms. There is an initial examination into multiplicities of knowledge, which takes place over two class days. Then, for the first half of the semester there are two “daily” assignments: At the end of every class period, students submit key words/phrases of that period to their instructor, and as part of homework, students submit three key words/phrases to their instructor—one of which they further describe. In the second half of the semester, students continue completing the first assignment but now homework asks that students expand upon one of the previously described words/phrases. At the conclusion of the semester, students work with the entire corpus of collected words/phrase—those submitted after class/as part of homework and those described/expanded—building word-clouds and discussing the word clouds’ implications.

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Anna Piotti

Photograph of author Anna Piotti

Anna Piotti is a dual-title Ph.D. candidate in German Linguistics and Language Science at Penn State. Her research interests fall at the intersection of (language)learning and pedagogy. Currently, she focuses on diversifying pedagogy and developing pedagogical materials that encourage student-voice in the classroom (incl: students-as-partners frameworks and learning-by-teaching paradigms), endeavoring to bring together faculty and students in reciprocal conversation to examine and explore theory and practice in an effort to challenge status quo and identify strategic and sustainable pedagogical practices.

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