Vocabulary Strategies That Work

Do This—Not That!

Lori G. Wilfong

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781596672291, 9781138129603
• eBook ISBN: 9781317922001
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Éducation
• Subtopic: Éducation générale

Update your vocabulary practices to meet the Common Core and improve students' word knowledge! This new, clearly-structured guide shows you how. It's packed with engaging, research-based, classroom-ready strategies for teaching vocabulary.

Topics include...

• Selecting meaningful words for direct instruction
• Strategies for engaging students in word study
• Helping students come up with their own definitions
• Authentic vocabulary assessment
• Greek and Latin word study
• Bringing vocabulary to life using symbols and pictures
• Using a word wall effectively
• Teaching vocabulary all the time
• Creating opportunities for wide reading
• Using and expecting academic language

For each vocabulary recommendation, you'll learn the research behind it, how it relates to the Common Core, and how to implement it in your classroom. The practical ideas for teaching vocabulary will benefit all of your students, including your English language learners, with specific connections to ELLs included throughout the book. This is a must-have resource for teaching vocabulary and meeting the Common Core standards!

Why This Item Is Important

José was pointing out to me in his direct way the fallacy the middle school I taught at had fallen into. As teachers, we were relying heavily on our textbooks to tell us which words to teach, and in doing so, we were completely inundating our students with words to know. José simply gave up, realizing that there was no way he could learn all those words in one week. The ideal number of words that students can handle cognitively is eight to ten a week for deep teaching (Scott, Jamieson-Noel, & Asselin, 2003); José had almost 80 words to learn!

Textbooks commonly identify several words in either the teacher manual or the student edition that are central to the meaning of the text, yet the thinking behind these selections is not clear. Nagy (2008) points out that publishers don’t have a consistent rule for selecting important vocabulary; rather, they go with words that are multisyllabic or repeated in later chapters. While it is easy to rely on textbooks to make this instructional decision, selecting which words to teach is too important for teachers to not give their input into the words they teach; they must consider the diversity of their students, students’ background knowledge, and which words are truly central to the reading and learning students are expected to do in the classroom.

The strategies and the research on selecting words join together in this chapter. There are several ways teachers can select words for instruction. The resulting words will differ from the words that students will pick up through conversation and reading; in fact, we know we need to rely on students to participate in several reading opportunities to increase their vocabularies exponentially beyond what we are able to achieve in the classroom (addressed in Chapter 8).

Do This–Not That principle #1: DO thoughtfully choose words to teach students; DON’T assign long lists predetermined by a textbook or publisher.

Updated Strategy #1: Tiering Words

A good beginning strategy to use when selecting vocabulary is to think about the “tiers” or “levels” of words that educators can identify for instruction. Beck, McKeown, and Kucan (2002) tier words like this:

Tier 1—General

Commonplace; learned from interactions with texts and people

Tier 2—Specialized

Change meaning with context (polysemic)

Tier 3—Technical

Specific to the discipline

Content Area Example: An example of this can be done with words and terms related to Memorial Day, such as freedom, war, picnic, hot dog, veteran, no school, and memorial. Tiered, they look like this:

Tier 1—General

♦ hot dog

♦ no school

♦ picnic

Tier 2—Polysemic

♦ freedom

♦ war

♦ veteran

♦ memorial

Tier 3—Content Specific

None

The focus on instruction for these words is on the polysemic words—words that have multiple meanings in different contexts. If I am teaching in a social studies class about Memorial Day, the Tier 2 words are important for me to focus on. I introduce students to their meaning in my class, but I would also have them brainstorm meanings for those words in other contexts, too. Polysemic words allow students to have power over academic language!

Updated Strategy #2: Answering Questions

Fisher and Frey (2011) developed a list of questions to assist teachers in deciding if a certain word is truly worthy of their teaching time.

1. Representative		Is the word critical to understanding?
2. Repeatability		Will it be used again?
3. Transportable		Is it needed for discussions or writing?
4. Contextual analysis		Can students use context to figure out the word?
5. Structural analysis		Can they use structure?
6. Cognitive load		Have I exceeded the number of words they can learn?

Content Area Example: A group of fifth-grade science teachers used this list of questions to analyze the set of words the textbook designated for instruction in the classroom, shown in Figure 1.1. The text book had thirty-three words designated for study across five lessons.

Figure 1.1 Words to Teach (Recommende...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Supplemental Downloads
• Meet the Author
• Foreword
• Introduction
• 1 Select Words to Teach
• 2 Use Strategies to Engage Students in Word Study
• 3 Help Students Come Up with Their Own Definitions
• 4 Assess Student Use of Words in Authentic Writing and Speaking
• 5 Teach Students Morphological Strategies to Figure Out Words They Do Not Know, in Addition to Context-Clue Strategies
• 6 Use Symbols and Pictures to Help Bring Vocabulary to Life
• 7 Highlight and Use a Word Wall in Classroom Instruction
• 8 Use and Apply Vocabulary Words Regularly (versus Isolated Practice)
• 9 Allow Opportunities for Wide Reading so Students Are Exposed to Words All the Time in a Variety of Books
• 10 Model the Use of Academic Language at All Times, Setting High Expectations for Language Use
• References