Download Chapter 6 Vocabulary Reflection: What does research say about

Chapter 6
Vocabulary
Reflection: What does research say about effective vocabulary instruction? What
are some best practices for teaching vocabulary?
Vocabulary is viewed as the glue that holds together stories, ideas, and content. It
allows comprehension to take place and for students to understand the words and how
they connect to the content around them. Vocabulary knowledge accounts for over 80
percent of the variance in students’ reading comprehension test scores. Words can be
learned through many different outlets, from experiences, conversations, and television,
to reading, speaking, writing, and listening. Vocabulary is built through language
interactions. “Books give us challenging concepts, colorful description, and new
knowledge and information about the world in which we live.” (p. 217) Educational
opportunities can greatly develop and enhance a rick and useful vocabulary.
There are four main types of vocabulary: listening, speaking, reading and writing.
Listening is the largest, where we can hear and understand words and build our
foundation on top of that. Speaking is the second largest, where students learn to speak
the words that they are hearing and seeing. Reading allows students to identify and
understand words in the context of other words in the text. And the fourth is writing,
where students practice writing the words in which they hear, speak, and read.
Research identifies many facts about teaching and learning vocabulary. The first
is that children learn the meanings of most words indirectly, through everyday
experiences with oral and written language. Conversations can be very beneficial for
students to hear and use vocabulary words. The second statement is that students learn
vocabulary when they are explicitly taught individual word means and word learning
strategies. Students often are able to better understand a new vocabulary word when it is
taught before they read the text where the word is found. And lastly, developing word
consciousness boosts vocabulary learning. Word consciousness is about making students
aware of words all around them, and encouraging them to learn and use new words in
their lives every day.
When teaching vocabulary, you must choose words that are important and focus
on the essential understanding of the text or content. You must also motivate and engage
your students. It is best when you can connect new words with prior knowledge. This
allows the students to have a foundation to build on. And you must teach explicitly. If
you connect meaning, phonics, and spelling, this will help give the student a wellbalanced view of the word and how to use it in the right context. A few strategies that can
be used when teaching vocabulary are the Frayer model, the 4-Fold Vocabulary, the
PAVE map, and the Vocabulary Anchor. The Frayer model is a simple method, but
allows for the students to explore the definition, characteristics, examples and nonexamples. The 4-Fold Vocabulary allows the students to make a chart listing the word,
definition, a visual aid, and a sentence for that word. They can keep the chart handy and
always refer to the words that they have learned. The PAVE map is great for learning a
new vocabulary word in context of a story or passage. It requires you to think of a
definition based on the context in which you find the word. Then, you look up the
dictionary definition, which allows you to compare your first thoughts with the accurate
description. And finally, the Vocabulary Anchor is a graphic strategy that helps students
make connections between concepts they know and concepts that are new to them. These
are just a few strategies that would be great to implement into your lessons when teaching
vocabulary.
Try it out: Teach or write an explicit vocabulary lesson.
I wrote a vocabulary lesson teaching the words certain, consider, and imitate. I
taught it to my third grade Cub Club student. We first started out with a madlib, which
introduced the new vocabulary words. Then, we learned the new words using a 4-Fold
Vocabulary Model. My student was very engaged and seemed to love this lesson. If I
taught this lesson again, I would give a few different definitions instead of just one
simplified. I thought that was the easiest, however, I feel like she could have more to go
off of if we had talked about a few different ways of saying the definition. Overall
though, at the end of the lesson, she was using the new words in sentences, and I am
excited to see her progress in further lessons
Try it out: Give a vocabulary assessment and score it.
For my third grade Cub Club student, I gave her a vocabulary assessment that
included many words from standardized third grade material. There were three sections:
“I know it well,” “I’ve seen it or heard it,” and “I’ve never heard it.” There were 45
words on the assessment. After scoring it I found that fifteen of them were marked “I
know it well.” Thirteen of them were marked “I’ve seen it or heard it.” And seventeen of
them were marked, “I’ve never heard it.” In planning for my instruction, I started
reviewing the words that she had heard or seen before, and planned my explicit
instruction on the words that she had never heard before. If I had to do it again, I would
maybe make another assessment for the words she checked as knowing well, and maybe
have her match the word with the definition so I could be sure she has those words as her
foundation. She has made great progress, and I am excited to give her the final
assessment to see her improvement.
Try it out: Use the Frayer model to teach vocabulary.
In morning intervention, I used the Frayer model to teach the words ability and
imitate. There were sections for her to write the word, the definition, characteristics,
examples, and non-examples. My student seemed to really enjoy using the graphic
organizer, and I even had her add a visual aid at the bottom because I knew she was very
visual in her learning. I would definitely add that again if I knew the student learned well
with pictures and visual aids. She struggled a little with coming up with characteristics of
the word, but loved writing examples. I think I would explain more in detail what a
characteristic would be so that she would have more of a context as to what to put instead
of just examples. After I taught her the two words using the Frayer model, the next week,
she remembered both words. I enjoyed using this model to teach with, and will definitely
implement it into future lessons.
Try it out: Work with students on homonyms, antonyms, and synonyms.
In morning intervention, we played a File Folder game called Vocab Bugs. It was
reviewing antonyms, synonyms, and homonyms. My student had never heard of the
different words before, but as we played, I taught her the different meanings. She caught
on so quickly, and was proud that she had learned something new that day. There were
three different colored bugs, and we mostly stuck with the synonyms and antonyms. We
would match each of them up, while talking about how to pronounce them and the
definition of each. Then we went back through and reviewed each after we had matched
all of the bugs. If I were going to do this again, I would have her keep track on her own
paper so that the words that she learned she could have a record of and keep in her
notebook. Overall, I loved this activity/lesson though.