Thinking about Vocabulary

When I was a classroom teacher, vocabulary instruction and assessment was always a challenge. What was the best way to teach content-area vocabulary? What was the best way to assess it? Were my students really learning new words to the point that they were owning them, or were they just learning them enough to pass a vocab quiz, never to think about them again?

After much research and thinking about this, I must confess -- I'm not sure I have all the answers. (Sorry! It would be sooooo much easier if I did, I know!) But I have learned some tried and true lessons when it comes to vocabulary instruction and assessment.

Here are my "biggies," my vocabulary non-negotiables:

• Focus on vocabulary depth versus vocabulary breadth. A more meaningful approach to learning certain key words well can have much more impact than "covering" a list of 20-30 terms at once.
• Focus on building a conceptual vocabulary with your students. This means choosing to teach vocabulary that is content-specific and is essential in understanding major concepts (in a literature course, this might also mean teaching a conceptual vocabulary within a literature theme). 
• According to Janet Allen (amazing author of Words, Words, Words: Teaching Vocabulary in Grades 4-12), the best impact on learning (and owning) vocabulary is repeated exposure to 5-10 useful words per week. This exposure must, however, be meaningful -- words need to be used in a meaningful context 10-15 times in order for students to master them (this does not include writing definitions over and over again, something I remember doing throughout my own education).
• Give students a vocabulary pre-test for a unit (if the unit has a large number of vocabulary words, think about breaking up the unit in terms of vocabulary -- take a smaller chunk at a time, including for pre- and post-tests). Let this pre-test inform your instruction (this might cause you to differentiate vocabulary studies for students with varying vocabulary knowledge).
• Create and actively use a word wall in your classroom per unit. (I could write an entire post on how best to actively use word walls so that they don't get forgotten about!)
• Be sure to deliberately teach the vocabulary words throughout the unit. Also, be sure these words are used by both yourself and your students multiple times throughout the unit (there are lots of ways to do this I am happy to share with you!).
• Finally, give students the vocabulary post-test. Let's see how they did!

I get pretty excited about vocabulary instruction and assessment these days. If you'd like to try out some new methods with your students, just let me know -- I'm here to help!

Vocabulary Blog Post (insert better title here)

Hello readers. My sincerest apologies for abandoning you last week. Between a wedding, a blizzard, and an upcoming trip to warmer climates, I neglected to share my educational thoughts with you. So, this week, I have something super exciting planned. Brace yourselves!

(You might be asking, “If this post is so super exciting, why doesn’t it have a better title?” Well, sorry readers. Title-writing was not my strength this week. I suppose an alternative title could be: “Beware Shameless Plugs.” Keep reading. You’ll get it.)

In my work as an instructional coach, I’ve been collaborating with a couple teachers who are interested in vocabulary instruction. This interest sent me running to all my vocabulary goodies (namely Janet Allen’s Words, Words, Words and Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey’s Word Wise & Content Rich, among others). I have since worked to synthesize all this great information into one handy dandy resource that I hope is very practical and easy to use. Since I can’t share the entire resource with you, I thought I’d share with you some of the ideas about vocabulary instruction the resource is centered around. And -- as a former ELA teacher I feel I must say this – these ideas are for ALL teachers, of any content area, in any grade pretty much 4 through 12. We all want our students to understand, know, and use the terminology of our content areas. So, here goes:

Why Vocabulary Instruction?

and What Should Vocabulary Instruction Look Like?

Many teachers have come to the same realization that Janet Allen, author of Words, Words, Words (1999) describes having come to after having used traditional vocabulary instruction methods (see – look up this word and copy down the definition) for years: “Students seldom [or never] gained enough in-depth word knowledge from this practice to integrate the words into their spoken or written language” (p. 2).

Although many of us have recognized this as a reality, we are still left with questions, such as the following:

If I don’t teach vocabulary in the “traditional” ways, what do I do instead?

If I don’t do the traditional “assign, define, and test,” what do I do instead?

If I do something different, how can I prove it’s working? (Allen, p. 2).

[SHAMELESS PLUG #1: The answers to these questions can be found in the afore-mentioned resource I’ve put together, and come primarily from Janet Allen’s Words, Words, Words (1999) and from Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey’s Word Wise & Content Rich (2008), among other sources.]

The first step is to ensure that our classes are “language-rich environment[s] with lots of reading, talking, and writing in which varying levels of direct instruction occur” (Allen, p. 6).

Ample opportunity for students to read is the key starting place for vocabulary instruction. As Allen (p. 14) states, “from this reading, extensive knowledge of words and opportunities for mediated and explicit instruction emerge.” The theory follows that students will primarily only learn new words if they experience them (i.e., in their reading), versus being handed them in isolation.

[SHAMELESS PLUG #2: Luckily, the resource I’ve put together contains plenty of ideas that ensure “that vocabulary development become[s] a natural part of classroom instruction. In other words, intentional instruction of vocabulary doesn’t stand apart from the content – it is a necessary factor in content mastery” (Fisher & Frey, p. 34).]

Fisher and Frey (p. 5) sum up our collective goal regarding vocabulary instruction: it is to “help students become self-regulating, independent word learners. We want to move the profession’s thinking hundreds of miles away from the view of vocabulary instruction as disembodied lists for students to memorize and toward a stance where word learning in the content areas is fun for students, is an excuse to interact with peers, and gives them the intellectual and social currency of being able to think, speak, read, and write with greater facility.”

[SHAMELESS PLUG #3: Hopefully, the suggested ideas and activities in the resource I’ve put together will help us reach that goal!]

BEFORE READING

The following are important reasons why we should provide our students with some unfamiliar words at the start of the reading of a new text or at the start of a unit:

·      To pre-assess students’ knowledge of pre-determined vocabulary words for the upcoming reading/unit

·      To inform the teacher which words will require explicit vocabulary instruction

·      To assist teachers in forming differentiated student groups based on students’ current word knowledge

Clearly, this means that we need to select important words from the upcoming reading/unit ahead of time. Below are some recommendations in making these selections:

·      Choose words that are the most important to understanding the text (with many texts, it would be overwhelming to present students with each and every unknown word about to be encountered, so Allen recommends narrowing it down to the “need to know” [vs. “nice to know”] words).

·      Choose words that may be encountered frequently in the text.

·      Choose words centered around a significant concept of the text.

·      Choose words that you want students to be able to use in discussions or in writing about the text.

·      Some words you choose may not appear in the text itself, but may be strong words in relation to the significant concept of the text (i.e., if students are about to read a book that takes place during the Civil Rights movement, the teacher could choose to select “integration” as an important vocabulary word for the unit of study, even if this word is not used directly in the text itself).

CAUTION: Providing students with a list of words before beginning to read a new text or studying a new topic does NOT mean that students should be expected to learn the definitions of these words ahead of time. Allen (pp. 8-9) warns us that “teaching words ahead makes children unwilling to face the hazard of a new book: in short, teaching words ahead produces dependent rather than independent readers.” Instead, use the time at the beginning of a new text or unit to pre-assess, to form groups, and to plan direct vocabulary instruction for later on in the unit.

[SHAMELESS PLUG #4: Lessons and activities that can help you pre-assess, form groups, and plan direct vocabulary instruction can be found in the handy dandy resource I put together!]

DURING READING

Once the reading of the new text (or the study of the new topic) has begun, it’s time for explicit, in-depth instruction and word study to occur. Remember that if we try to teach students an entire list of words and their meanings before they even begin a new piece of reading or the study of a new topic, the chances that they become overwhelmed and shut down are high.

[SHAMELESS PLUG #5: Whew! Thank goodness there’s a resource out there that can provide you with lessons and activities you can use with your students to conduct such in-depth word study. I bet there’s even some tips in that resource for differentiating vocabulary instruction if lots of your students are at different vocabulary readiness levels… (hint – there are some tips for that in the resource I’ve put together).]

 Did you happen to notice all those SHAMELESS PLUGS throughout this post? Well, here’s the last one (I promise).

SHAMELESS PLUG #6: If all of the above sounds interesting to you, and you want to change or improve the way vocabulary instruction functions in your classroom (and, of course, if you teach in the same district as me!), then contact me. I would love to make you a copy of a handy dandy vocabulary instruction resource (did I mention I’ve put one together recently???) and I would love to meet with you and discuss the ideas therein and work with you to put some of them in place in your classroom.

Taking Down the "Vocabulary Time" Banner

     Ever assign some reading to your students only to realize later that they walked away with very little comprehension of it? If your answer is "no," then you and I need to meet. In person. As soon as possible. So I can learn all your secrets. But my guess is most of us would answer "yes" to this question. And this is really a dilemma, because reading needs to occur in basically every content area and in many, many walks of life. Numerous studies show us that a student's reading ability is directly related to academic success -- or failure.

     Know what else a student's reading ability is directly related to? A knowledge of academic vocabulary. The following is a sample reading from Fisher and Frey's Word Wise & Content Rich in which the authors substituted in nonsense words so that we could get a feel for what it's like to read a text when we don't know just 5 percent of the words:

"Caffeine is tasteless. A 'strong' sjdkjdkj is mostly the result of the amount of coffee in relation to the amount of water. The longer a bean is ksjdksjd, the less caffeine it has. 'Arabica' beans have less caffeine than 'Robusta' beans. 'Arabica' beans have more flavor that 'Robusta' beans, which are mostly used in high-volume coffees and instant coffees. Djkjkefje is the way the bean is sjfkjfee, not the bean itself.  You can use many different sjkjdkejds to produce sdjksjdk coffee. You can also use the ksdjksjds roasted coffee to make a larger cup of coffee. In the United States, skdjksj roasting results in a darker roast than kjdksjd roasting in Europe."

     You can probably still figure some things out about this text even without knowing 5 percent of the words. I'm sure you all gleaned that the text is about coffee. But, you might have a difficult time answering questions about the meaning of the passage, right? Many of you probably have a decent amount of background knowledge about the subject matter, so you could use that schema to help you fill in some blanks. But imagine if you had limited background knowledge about the topic and didn't know the words. Enter incomprehension.

     Here's some awesome news: as an educator, you can do something about this for your students. And I know, I know what some of you are thinking: "I do not have time to teach vocabulary. I have so many other things to cover in my content area! Please do not add this to my plate!" Never fear, readers. Fisher and Frey argue that we don't "need to hang up a banner that [says], 'Vocabulary Time.' Instead, [we can] incorporate vocabulary development seamlessly into [our] content teaching" (2008, p. 35). 

     (Now, unfortunately for you, readers, this post is a tad pre-mature. I just started reading the Fisher and Frey text this week, and am only about halfway through. So, my "how-to" examples will seem a bit scant. But they are great starting points, and I promise to share more later...Cross my heart...)

     Here's one way to weave vocabulary instruction right into content instruction: teacher modeling. I've said it before and I'll say it again -- you cannot beat effective modeling when it comes to good instruction. This example is no different. Fisher and Frey provide a sample of a teacher modeling via a think aloud while working through a mathematics problem:

"I see that the innermost parentheses can't be reduced further. x + 1 is in the innermost, the most inside parentheses, and I know that I can't add terms that aren't alike. So next I look to the outside and need to distribute the eight across the terms inside the parentheses. By distribute, I don't mean pass out papers, I mean apply it across the terms, so inside the brackets, I would get (8x + 8) + 2."

     Do you see how this teacher anticipated that students might get thrown off by the terms "innermost" and "distribute?" What's more, she didn't put a halt to the teaching of her content; she simply wove in a think aloud of the meanings of the terms.

     Here's something I think is even more helpful: modeling what to do if you come across a word you don't know. (Now, some of you probably have some pretty amazing vocabularies, so every now and then you may need to pretend not to know some words in front of your students in order to pull off this kind of modeling. It's for the greater good, trust me!)

     In reading a passage to his class, the teacher encounters a word he doesn't know and can model several ways he might go about solving this problem. He could model using the content clues of the surrounding words and sentences to guess at the meaning of the word, he could model breaking down the word into word parts like affixes to help him determine the meaning of the word. Or, he could model how to use resources to figure out the meaning of the word (like using a dictionary or asking a peer). The key is to allow your students to see these thought processes in action. And, again, the wonderful news is this can all be done in the midst of your content instruction. Vocabulary + content = the perfect pair!

     (There are lots more ways to incorporate vocabulary instruction with content instruction, I promise. Just let me keep reading and researching for a little while longer, and I'll hit you up with the info. in a later post!)