Vocabulary You Might Remember

I feel like most of us had at least one teacher who handed the class a list of words to learn by the end of the week and as soon as we'd been tested on them, we promptly forgot everything we'd just learned. This system seems flawed to me. If the purpose of giving students vocab words is for them to not just learn them but know them, perhaps we should be taking a different route.

Our students are increasingly focused on the internet and are less and less interested in sitting still while staring at a stagnant, black and white list of words they need to memorize. Our world is changing and we must change with it or we will inevitably be left behind. The internet generation only wants to read a Tweet of 140 characters, a video only holds their attention if it's a Vine of 6 seconds or less, and our students only want to see pictures that their friends are tagged in. By integrating some kind of visual aspect into the memorization of technology, it's possible that our students will not only learn, but remember their vocabulary words. A lot of teachers may balk at the idea of integrating yet another thing into their classroom, but if it helps to cement what you're teaching them, shouldn't we be trying it? Isn't that, after all, the whole point of teaching? We're here to help the students better themselves and while it may mean a little more work for us, the end result is what we're looking for. At the end of the day, we just want to create educated students.