360 Vocabulary

1. 360 Vocabulary By: Tracey Johnson, Lizzy Inclima, Kylie Flint

2. Why Teach Vocabulary? • It has never been a question on whether to teach vocabulary, but how to make vocabulary instruction meaningful in ways other than assigning word lists. • The more students understand terms that are relevant to the subjects they are learning, the easier it is for them to read and understand information they come upon.

3. What we know from research... • Without effective instruction strategies, students will continue to struggle and not perform at the level they should. • Direct vocabulary instruction improves comprehension (Baumann, Kame'enui, and Ash 2003). • Repeated exposure to words in meaningful contexts improves comprehension (Nagy, 1990). • Discussion leads to vocabulary learning (Stahl and Clark, 1987).

4. The Tiers of Vocabulary A majority of vocabulary instruction focuses on words from Tier 2

5. The Stahl model of learning 1. Include both definitional information and contextual information about each word's meaning. 2. Involve students more actively in word learning. 3. Provide multiple exposures to meaningful information about the word.

6. The hard facts! • Vocabulary size: First grade: 2,500 to 26,000 College Graduate: 19,000 to 200,000 • 1 hour of reading at a regular rate exposes a student to 2,250,000 words in a school year! • Students add between 2,500 and 3,000 words each school year • Research suggests only teaching between words per week = 400 words per year • 3,000-400=2,600 words that students are learning somewhere else!