Vocabulary Instruction

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VocabularyInstruction

• Charlene Cobb
• Senior Program Associate
• March 22, 2005

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Five Essential Elements of Reading

• Identified by the National Reading Panel as
  critical components to reading success
• Phonemic awareness
• Phonics
• Vocabulary
• Fluency
• Comprehension

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As explained by the NRP

• Vocabulary development is linked to levels of
  comprehension.
• Students have speaking, listening, reading, and
  writing vocabularies These will vary in depth
  and breadth.
• Teaching vocabulary should be done both directly
  and indirectly.
• Repetition and multiple exposures to words is
  critical.

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Vocabulary Preview

• How many words each year do students learn in
  grades 3 - 7?
• Given the large number of words that students
  have to learn to read, isnt direct instruction
  in vocabulary futile?
• What impact if any, does direct vocabulary
  instruction have on reading comprehension?

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Vocabulary Preview

• How many exposures to a word do most basal
  reading programs provide?
• What is most important to word learning,
  vocabulary drill or contextual practice?
• How well does a student have to know a vocabulary
  word before it will help?
• Which kind of comprehension - literal or
  inferential - has been found to be more related
  to vocabulary learning?

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Principles of effective vocabulary instruction

• Vocabulary instruction should be integrative
• should help students connect new words to their
  existing knowledge of words
• should move from what students already know to
  what is new their existing knowledge serves as
  an anchor for their learning

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Principles of effective vocabulary instruction

• Vocabulary should be learned deeply through
  active processing and discussion
• processing occurs at three levels
• associative simple connections
• comprehension understanding a word through
  application
• generational using given words in new ways

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Principles of effective vocabulary instruction

• Vocabulary instruction needs to include
  repetition
• students need to see, hear, and use words many
  times in many contexts
• repetition should not involve simple or
  drill-like repetition on word lists or flash
  cards
• repetition needs to be within meaningful contexts

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Principles of effective vocabulary instruction

• Words and concepts are best learned when they are
  presented in meaningful ways
• meaningful use means not only seeing the words in
  meaningful contexts, but also thinking about and
  using them in meaningful ways

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Principles of effective vocabulary instruction

• The teachers own attitude toward words and word
  learning plays a critical role in vocabulary
  instruction
• teachers that find word study fascinating will be
  able to interest their students in words

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Words have levels of utility

• Tier One
• the most basic words, e.g. clock, baby, happy
• rarely require instruction in school
• Tier Two
• high frequency words for mature language users,
  e.g. coincidence, absurd, industrious
• instruction in these words can add productively
  to an individuals language ability in reading
  and writing
• Tier Three
• words whose frequency of use is quite low, often
  limited to specific domains, e.g. isotope, lathe,
  peninsula
• probably best learned when needed in a content
  area
• Source Beck I., McKeown, M., Kucan, L. (2002).
  Bringing words to life Robust vocabulary
  instruction. New York Guilford.

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Words have levels of understanding

• Verbal association level
• Words in ever day use
• Partial concept knowledge
• Deeper level of understanding
• Knowledge of multiple meaning possibilities
• Full concept knowledge
• Deep level of understanding that includes
  knowledge of word families, multiple meaning and
  ways to extend definitions to applications
• Ability to discriminate word from similar words
• Source Allen, J. (1999). Words, words, words
  Teaching vocabulary for grades 4-12. Stenhouse.

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Developing Effective Vocabulary Practices

• Increase
• Time for reading
• Use of varied, rich text
• Opportunities for students to hear or use words
  in natural sentence contexts
• Use concrete contexts when possible (pictures,
  artifacts)
• Opportunities for students to connect new
  words/concepts to those already known
• Study of concepts rather than single unrelated
  words
• Explicit concept instruction and incidental
  encounters with words
• Teaching strategies leading to independent word
  learning
• Finding the word or concept that will have the
  biggest impact on comprehension rather than
  covering many words superficially
• Opportunities for inference

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Developing Effective Vocabulary Practices

• Decrease
• Looking up definitions as a single source of word
  knowledge
• Asking students to write sentences for new words
  before theyve studied the word in depth
• Notion that all words in a text need to be
  defined for comprehension
• Using context as a highly reliable tool for
  increasing comprehension
• Assessments that ask students for single
  definitions

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The problem with dictionaries

• Dictionary writers are limited to a specific
  number of words per definition
• Definitions are most helpful when you already
  know something about a word
• Definitions confuse more often than they inform

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Example

• Student must look up a word and use it in a
  sentence
• The word is erode.
• Dictionary definition 1 is to eat out.
• Students sentence is
• My family erodes once a week.

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Content area vocabulary instruction

• Words are labels for concepts
• Concepts create mental images representing what
  can be grouped together by common features
• Concepts rarely stand alone, but are part of a
  hierarchy of relationships
• Every concept has an example a member of the
  concept being considered
• Teachers can help students build conceptual
  knowledge of content area terms by teaching and
  reinforcing the concept words in relation to
  other concept words

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Levels of Learning
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Levels of Learning

• Enduring knowledge
• the big ideas and important understandings
• students need to retain these words after theyve
  forgotten many of the details
• these words will anchor a unit or course of
  study.
• students must have a conceptual understanding in
  order to move on to further study.
• Important knowledge and skills
• ideas that students need to understand in order
  to be successful in the unit of study.
• core knowledge that is related to the enduring
  knowledge and helps the students extend their
  learning.
• Knowledge worth being familiar with
• we want students to hear, read, or otherwise
  encounter
• words become what is nice to know but not
  essential.

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Science unit example
Source Wiggins, G. McTighe, J. (1998).
Understanding by design. Alexandria, Virginia
Association for Supervision and Curriculum
Development
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Teaching and Learning Strategies

• Possible Sentences
• Knowledge Rating
• Connect Two
• Word Sort
• Concept of Definition Map
• Concept Ladder

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Possible Sentences

• neutrality aggression
• dictator appeasement
• fascist Mussolini
• Nazis Hitler
• totalitarian Stalin
• Allies Axis

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Knowledge Rating before reading
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Knowledge Rating after reading
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Try this..
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Putting it all together

• Encourage lots of reading - intensive and
  extensive.
• Make children aware of unknown words.
• Provide direct word meaning instruction.
• Develop contextualized meanings, not just
  definitions or synonyms.
• Help students gain an understanding of the
  relationship among words.
• Relate new words to student knowledge - respect
  differences between words and concepts.
• Frequent review is essential.
• Encourage active learning of vocabulary

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Charlene Cobb charlene.cobb_at_learningpt.org 1120
East Diehl Road, Suite 200 Naperville, IL
60563 P 630.649.6533 gt F 630.649.6700 www.learn
ingpt.org
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P 630-649-6500 gt F 630-649-6700 800-356-2735 gt
www.learningpt.org 1120 East Diehl Road, Suite
200 Naperville, IL 60563