TEACHING VOCABULARY SECONDARY LITERACY 5

1. TEACHING VOCABULARYSECONDARY LITERACY 5 Domenica Vilhotti Literacy Specialist

2. Journal In 1995, Hart & Risley studied vocabulary development of high SES and low SES children over time. They did intense observations of children of professors at the University of Kansas and children of the Turner House, a pre-school located in the impoverished Juniper Gardens area of Kansas City.

3. Journal The following graph shows the general trend they found. What are the implications of it for you? What responses does it raise for you? Turn to your notebooks and reflect on your thoughts after looking at the following data.

6. Betty Hart and Todd R. Risley:Corps Members in Spirit • Findings: • In terms of words addressed to children: • 30 million word gap by age 3 • The achievement gap is a word gap

7. What Did You Write?

8. Final Thoughts on Hart & Risley • “Estimating the hours of intervention needed to equalize children’s early experience makes clear the enormity of the effort that would be required to change children’s lives” (Hart & Risley, “The Early Catastrophe”). • TFA as an intervention that does not end, therefore not an intervention, but the norm, the common experience.

9. What are we learning? CMWBAT… • Explain three key principles of effective vocabulary instruction • Choose appropriate words to teach • Outline a lesson plan using these three principles

10. Why are we learning this? • Given the word gap and high vocabulary demands of secondary text, effective vocabulary instruction is critical

11. Agenda • DO NOW • Introduction: the achievement gap is a word gap • How to choose appropriate words to teach • How to teach them • How to anticipate and address pitfalls • How content-area model LPs teach vocabulary • Output: outline a lesson teaching 5 vocabulary words • Close

13. Words to Teach Do teach “Brick,” “Mortar,” and “Capstone” words Avoid “Window-dressing” words

14. How to choose words to teach? • Brick Words • Key content words • Essential to understanding of content • Teach many of these • Observations, data, hypothesis, nomad, assimilate, mean, median, evidence, protagonist, essay

15. How to choose words to teach? • Mortar Words • Connecting words & multi-use academic verbs • However, Analyze, Compare

16. Mortar Words – Think Bloom’s Verbs For “Analyze”: Interpret, classify, analyze, arrange, differentiate, group, compare, organize, contrast,examine, scrutinize, survey, categorize, dissect, probe, create an inventory, investigate, question, discover, inquire, distinguish, detect, diagram, chart, inspect

17. How to choose words to teach? • Capstone Words • Big academic concepts built upon brick words • Scientific method, probability, character development, culture clash

18. How to choose words to teach? • Window dressing words • Rare & exotic words with low-utility • Supercilious, banal, cravat • Avoid teaching these

19. The Bottom Line • Students will encounter unfamiliar words • Focus: pre-teach key words • Bricks, mortar and then capstone words • Build meaning, avoid window dressing words

20. Best Practice: CFU Constantly, Informally C? I CFU – Constant, Informal Checks for Understanding • Particularly for English Language Learners, check for vocabulary understanding constantly and informally • Fist-to-five, Stop & Jot, TPS, direct questioning to representative subgroups

21. LS THROWDOWN! • CM Binder page 555 • HS social studies text • Our job: PRIORITIZE • Which words help meet the objective? • Which words they can they not do without?

22. How do I teach them? • Using the Frayer Model to learn about concept of “effective vocabulary instruction” – page 556

23. Frayer Model:Effective Vocabulary Instruction Definition: Well-planned and purposeful instruction that provides students with deep understanding of key words

24. Frayer Model: Effective Vocabulary Instruction Key Characteristics: Be NIMble • NUMBER: Teaching a small number of words providing student-friendly definitions. • INTERACTION: Creating meaningful interactions with words that lead to deep processing. • MULTIPLE EXPOSURE: Providing multiple exposures in a variety of contexts

25. Frayer Model:Effective Vocabulary Instruction • Example: Monday: • Student-friendly definitions for 5 brick & mortar words • Models a vocab-learning strategy: roots and suffixes • Example sentences • TPS – meaningful sentences Tuesday: • Guided reading of the text, clarifying meanings Wednesday: • Students use words in RAFT writing activity responding to text

26. Think – Pair – Share • How is this biology teacher practicing NIMble, effective vocabulary instruction? • Refer back to your 3 key principles of vocab instruction under “Key Characteristics.”

27. Frayer Model:Effective Vocabulary Instruction • Non-Example: • On Monday, teacher interrupts reading to have students copy 15 words and their definitions from the glossary. • On Tuesday, they complete a worksheet filing in the blanks for 15 unrelated sentences. • On Friday, they take a spelling test on the words. Think – Pair – Share: • Which principles of NIMble vocab instruction does this teacher ignore? • What are the possible effects on student achievement?

28. Frayer Model: multiple uses

29. Vocab, List 23 • Adaptation • Culinary • Gourmet • Gastronomy • Delectable • Pungent

30. Adaptation • To alter, change, or modify abilities, structures, or behaviors in order to better survive in an environment

31. Culinary • Relating to cooking and kitchen activities

32. Gourmet • Having high-quality or exotic tastes or preferences in food and drink

33. Gastronomy • Art or science of good eating • Artistic or scientific approach to cooking or eating

34. Delectable • Adj: Delicious, delightful, enjoyable • Noun – “Delicacy”: an especially appealing or appetizing food

35. Pungent • Very strong, usually biting or sharp, smell or taste

36. Definitions

37. Choice Assignments

38. Reader’s Theater • NIMble instruction sounds easy. What could possibly go wrong?

39. Avoid These Planning Pitfalls! • Not planning WHAT key words to pre-teach • Not planning HOW to teach key words • Not planning HOW to address and teach non-key words

40. Content Area Groups • Analyze vocabulary lesson plans for your content area • Jot down in your notebooks answers to the following: • How does teaching the selected words help further the content objectives? • How does the lesson engage students meaningfully with the words and thinking critically about vocabulary? • What could you do to improve it in this regard? • What would be needed to reinforce the learning of these words?

41. The Big Three: Vocab Teaching, be NIMble • NUMBER: Focused on small number of words that were essential to content objectives • INTERACTION: Opportunity for students to actively work with the words’ meanings by providing examples, testing partners, creating visuals… • MULTIPLE CONTEXTS: Multiple contexts for the words, sometimes just discussing the word, then reading it, or many contexts as in the math example

42. When to be NIMble? In terms of lesson structure, when did your content LP use vocab instruction? • Before? • Full Lesson? • Avoid After – unless reteaching to address misunderstanding

43. Workshop • Hand-out: Vocabulary Lesson Outline • Using a text you are going to teach: • Select 5 key academic words of different types • Bricks, mortar & capstone • Essential to understanding text • Serve the purpose for reading the text • Complete outline • Hand-out: Playing with Vocabulary and model lessons

44. What did we learn?

45. Key Characteristics: be NIMble • NUMBER: Teaching a small number of words providing student-friendly definitions. • INTERACTION: Creating meaningful interactions with words that lead to deep processing. • MULTIPLE EXPOSURE: Providing multiple exposures in a variety of contexts

46. Our bigger purpose • To close the achievement gap, we must address the vocabulary gap. • To do so, teach key academic words in multiple, meaningful ways.

47. Check-out • Homework? • Journals to mailbox • Names returned

48. Reading Comprehension is an Interactive Process Today’s Session Today’s Session RAND Model, 2002