Undergrads and Underdogs
In my first year as a university researcher, I developed a class to engage undergraduate students in research. My goal was to give undergraduate students research experiences that would prepare them for graduate school and, at the same time, provide some type of service to the children and teachers in my community. I affectionately called this experience Undergrads and Underdogs, even though the university had a different name for it. I have continued the Undergrads and Underdogs initiative ever since. As part of the course, undergraduate students learn to read books to at-risk preschoolers and teach vocabulary and comprehension while reading and talking. They volunteer about 20 hours a semester in Head Start classrooms, while in class they discuss topics such as behavior management, cultural and linguistic diversity, and the language basis of reading. The undergrads also learn how to select good words to teach from storybooks and design mini vocabulary lessons based on the books. The materials that have been developed for Undergrads and Underdogs and the materials the undergrads have developed are available for free right here.
Based on an excellent article by Beth Spencer (a.k.a. Elizabeth Kelley), Howard Goldstein, and Ruth Kaminski, I developed a quick and easy-to-use guide to storybook reading. Following the guidelines in this article and outlined explicitly in this handout, a bookmark template was used to develop vocabulary lessons to embed in storybook reading. You can create your own using our template or download the Bookmarks the undergrads have developed over the years.