Knowing What You Don't Know
Monitor your own vocabulary gaps — notice words you half-know, distinguish confident from uncertain knowledge, and develop strategies to resolve the uncertainty
What a learner can do afterwards
- Noticing Unfamiliar Words Assessment research (grade 2+)
- word consciousness and vocabulary metacognition research
- Building Word Knowledge e-Book (PMC 2019)
The lesson
Some words you know for sure. Some words you have never seen before. But there is a tricky middle group: words you sort of know. You can guess at them, but you are not fully sure. Noticing this middle group is a skill you can learn.
Maya reads: 'The cave was pitch dark.' She thinks pitch might mean very, but she is not fully sure. She notices that fuzzy feeling and stops. She checks a dictionary and finds out she guessed right.
Ben reads the same sentence. He also feels unsure about pitch, but he just keeps reading. Later he uses the word wrong, because he never checked his guess.
When a word gives you that fuzzy, not-quite-sure feeling, that is your signal. Pause and check it: look it up, ask someone, or reread the sentence for more clues.
Notice the fuzzy, sort-of-sure feeling about a word, then pause and check it instead of guessing and moving on.
Watch it
Where it sits
This opens up
8 questions wait behind this lesson, each with its answer explained. Every answer feeds the sky: stars light as they are learned, and dim when it is time to come back.