Too Many Words, Too Little Time: Effective Vocabulary Instruction K-3

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Too Many Words, Too Little TimeEffective
Vocabulary Instruction K-3

• Kevin Flanigan, Ph.D.
• West Chester University
• kflanigan_at_wcupa.edu

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Agenda

• Principles and Components of Effective Vocabulary
  Instruction
• Vocabulary Strategies
• Research-based
• Instructional bang for your buck
• Questions

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Relationship between Vocabulary and Comprehension

• Vocabulary knowledge is one of the strongest
  predictors of reading comprehension (Anderson
  Freebody, 1981 Davis, 1941)
• Vocabulary instruction has a strong relation to
  text comprehension (McKeown, Beck, Omanson,
  Perfetti, 1983)

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Vocabulary of a high school graduate? College
graduate?

• High school graduate?
• 25,000 50,000 words (Nagy Anderson, 1984)
• College graduate ?
• 60 75,000 words (Crystal, 1995)

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The mathematics of vocabulary instruction

• Lake Wobegon School District
• 20 words per week
• X 36 weeks per year
• 720 words per year
• X 13 years
• 9,360 words
• Uh oh . . . .

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3 General Components of Vocabulary
Instruction(Templeton, Bear, Invernizzi,
Johnston, 2009)

• Overall Context (reading, writing, rich
  discussion)
• Direct Vocabulary Instruction
• Word-specific (teaching specific words)
• Generative (teaching how words work)
• Word Consciousness a positive attitude and
  disposition toward learning words

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Have you ever?/Word Wizard(Beck, McKeown,
Kucan, 2002)

• Purpose to connect new words to known concepts
  and encourage students to notice examples of
  words in contexts outside of school (or outside
  of formal instruction)
• Procedure
• Choose Tier Two words and ask students to bring
  back examples from home (I saw a radiant sunset
  last night!).
• For each word used, the student, group, or class
  earns a points toward class competition and/or
  grade, extra credit.

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Lets try it

• Agog very excited impatiently eager
• While waiting for the train to take him home,
  the soldier was agog about his homecoming.
• Saturnine sullen, gloomy, depressed
• The teachers saturnine demeanor put a damper on
  any joy or excitement among the children.

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Two Points!

• When I found out we were going to have our third
  child, I was agog! However, after I calculated
  the number of diapers that would need changing
  over the course of three years, I became slightly
  saturnine.

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Principles of Vocabulary Instruction(Blachowicz
Fisher, 2000)

• The students should
• Be ACTIVE and ENGAGED in developing their
  understanding of words and ways to learn them.
• PERSONALIZE word learning.
• Be IMMERSED in words (listening, speaking,
  reading, writing).
• REPEATEDLY experience words across a VARIETY OF
  RICH CONTEXTS.
• Learn new words/concepts by RELATING them to
  existing words/concepts.
• Learn both SPECIFIC WORDS and strategies for
  INDEPENDENT word learning.

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Word Wizard

• List students names on board in classroom
• Students earn points for bringing examples of
  words from the world back to class
• To earn a point, student must demonstrate
  knowledge of the words meaning Dad, this boy
  in our class is SO supercilious.

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How were YOU taught Vocabulary?
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Clue Review Word BankExample
zealous tangible strut
agog saturnine dote
harmony stroll swagger
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Clue Review/Taboo

• Purpose to review concepts repeatedly,
  actively, across a range of contexts
• Procedure
• Concept/words are written on cards.
• Pairs (a) clue giver, (b) clue detective.
• Clue detective places card on his forehead, so
  she cant see it, but clue giver can see it.
• Clue giver provides clues to clue detective for
  each word.
• Pairs switch roles.

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Clue Review

• Tips
• Cant do sounds like Nunion!
• Definition/clue must relate to essential elements
  of that word/concept (For George Washington,
  cant say, Dude with the wig!).
• Pair up ELL and native language speakers. Native
  language speaker can be first clue giver to
  provide a language model for ELL.
• Use word bank as scaffold.

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Clue Review

• Switch pairs to hear multiple ways of defining
  the same word/concept.
• Taboo tournament!
• Every student in class is actively engaged 100
  of the time.
• Homework assignment with parents/siblings.
• Collect words on rings, in soap dishes, baggies,
  in notebooks, or coffee cans.

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Applause, Applause(Beck, McKeown, Kucan, 2002)

• Clap to indicate how much you would like to be
  described as
• Saturnine?
• A doting mom, dad, aunt, sister?
• Compassionate?
• A GADFLY?

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Thumbs up/thumbs down(Beck, McKeown, Kucan,
2002)

• Would a tough drill sergeant dote on his
  soldiers?
• Is a car tangible?
• Is love tangible?

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Word Associations(Beck, McKeown, Kucan, 2002)

• Which word goes with a model walking down the
  runway? Why?
• Which word goes with a bully? Why?
• Which word goes with a grandparent giving their
  grandchildren all the candy they can eat? Why?

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Sentence Expansion (Santa, Havens, Valdes,
2004)

• Purpose
• To expand/extend vocabulary into writing
• Excellent revision strategy/use with cemetery
  words
• Procedure
• On strips of paper, write Boring Sentences such
  as The boy ate his ice cream.
• In pairs, students rewrite the sentence with more
  precise vocabulary such as, The famished boy
  devoured his double chocolate scoop cone.

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• The man went to the party.

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Music Puzzler(Townsend, 2009)

• Write down your favorite song(s).
• Use the target words this week to describe your
  favorite songs.
• Does your song make you want to strut or swagger?
  Why/why not?
• Does it make you feel saturnine or agog? Why/why
  not?
• Does it give you a feeling of harmony?

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Picture Puzzler for tangible(Townsend, 2009)
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Picture Puzzler

• Present a picture(s) to the students that is
  somehow related to the target word.
• Ask students to write in their vocabulary
  notebooks how they think the picture is related
  to the words meaning. Write-pair-share.
• Students share with entire class. Teacher
  clarifies misconceptions.
• Excellent assessment of student understanding of
  word.

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Concept Sorts (with power thinking)

• Take any set of concepts, vocabulary words,
  sentences, story events, and mix them up!
• Students must reorganize them.
• Promotes understanding of the pieces and how
  the pieces relate to each other the
  structure.

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Cramming on the Farm
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Selected Resources

• Beck, Isabel L., McKeown, Margaret G., and Kucan,
  Linda. Bringing Words to Life Robust Vocabulary
  Instruction. New York Guilford, 2002.
• Nagy, W.E., Anderson, R.C. (1984). How many
  words are there in printed school English?
  Reading Research Quarterly, 19(3), 304 330.
• Santa, C.M., Havens, L.T., Valdes, B.J. (2004).
  Project CRISS Creating Independence through
  student-owned strategies (3rd edition). Dubuque,
  IA Kendall/Hunt.
• Templeton, S., Bear, D., Invernizzi, M.,
  Johnston, F. (2010). Vocabulary their way Word
  study with middle and secondary students. Boston
  Allyn Bacon.