Classroom Job Chart

Job charts can be beneficial within a classroom due to promoting student responsibility as individuals and as a class. Because of this, I was interested in learning if having a classroom job chart related to student academic success. I reviewed The Vocabulary-Rich Classroom: Modeling Sophisticated Word Use to Promote Word Consciousness and Vocabulary Growth written by Holly Lane and Stephanie Allen where it addressed this subject.

Within this article, it gave an excellent example about how a classroom job chart is related to vocabulary achievement. Ms. Barker's kindergarten class had a classroom job chart where there were jobs such as line leader, zookeeper, cleanup helper, and weather watcher. At the beginning of the school year, she asked her weather watcher to report the weather. On this occasion, Sarah, the weather watcher, reported that it was sunny. When Ms. Barker asked if it would be warm or cool, Sarah answered confidently by saying, "warm."

As the school year continues, Ms. Barker starts to change the terminology on the classroom job chart, while leaving the jobs the same. In February, Ms. Barker had changed the line leader to "classroom movement coordinator," the zookeeper had become the "animal nutrition specialist," the cleanup helper had become the "custodian," and the weather watcher had become the "meteorologist." In making these changes, she asked Jared, the meteorologist, to give her the forecast for that day. Jared responded by saying, "It's going to be rather brisk today." A classroom observer later asked Jared about his word choice when he said, "Well, it's colder than cool, but it's a long way from frigid."

This is just one example of how classroom job charts can promote academic success through vocabulary. Ms. Barker intentionally set up her classroom to where her kindergarteners would be exposed to more complex and detail oriented terminology as the year progressed. As a result, her class started using more detailed terminology in their everyday language.