The ABC’s of it All…

1. The ABC’s of it All… Vocabulary Lillian Henderson, MSP, CCC-SLP, LSLS Cert. AVT Erin Thompson, MS, CCC-SLP, LSLS Cert. AVT

2. What we’re going to talk about today: • Vocabulary: • What is it? • How do kids learn vocabulary? • Impact of Hearing Loss on vocabulary development • Why is it important? • Vocabulary Development • How to Teach Vocabulary • The vocabulary hierarchy • Practice! • Strategies: • Different strategies for different stages of development • Selecting Vocabulary: • Where to find it? • What to pick!

3. Vo-cab-u-lary (noun) : a sum or stock of words employed by a language, group, individual, or work or in a field of knowledge

4. How Do Children with Normal Hearing Learn Vocabulary? • Babies learn words by listening to their caregivers. Research that was conducted by Parents Report showed that children learn words faster by hearing more words consistently. – Richard Laliberte

5. The Word Gap in Hearing Children • Hart and Risley,(1995) found a vocabulary gap at the age of three, based on parents’ socioeconomic status. • Children of Professional families used 1100 words • Children of Working class families used 650 words • Children of Welfare families used 400 words • Children from high socioeconomic status had 16 times more language stimulation than children from lower status families.

6. What Happens In Kindergarten? • Scarborough (2001) showed convincing evidence that children who enter kindergarten with weak language (vocabulary) skills are likely to encounter difficulty in learning to read.

7. Why Is Vocabulary SO Important? • “To read a book with ease, a child should be able to read about 19 out of 20 words on a page correctly. If not, the book is probably too difficult.” Shaywitz (2003)

8. Why Is Vocabulary SO Important? • Reading is a poor means of acquiring initial language skills. To learn a significant amount of language through reading, children must already have basic visual word recognition skills, a good vocabulary, an awareness of syntactic skills, understanding of the semantic properties of words and sentences, and extensive experience of the world around them. Only if such skills are present can children search a text for it’s meaning.” Ling, Foundations of Spoken Language for the Hearing Impaired

9. Why Is Vocabulary SO Important? The child with severely delayed language and vocabulary is not ready to read. “Because one must know and be able to use the language that is to be read, the best way to work with such a child is to concentrate on his/her acquisition of lang. & vocabulary.” (L. Robertson, 2000) “Low oral vocabulary and poorer overall language skills begin to exact a heavy toll on reading achievement by grade 3 when text demands increase.” (Storch & Whitehurst, 2002)

11. Vocabulary Development Expressive • 12-18 mo. • 18-24 mo. • 2-3 yrs. • 3-4 yrs. • 5-6 yrs • To go on to higher education, kids need to know 100,000 words! • Owens, R.E. (1992). Language Development: An Introduction, 3rd edition. New York: MacMillian.

12. Bricks to Build Your House! * Children are now using grammatically correct sentences, words are not being omitted.

13. By age 5, typically developing children are learning as many as _____ new words every day.

14. How Does This Affect Children Who are Hearing Impaired? • Children who have hearing loss & especially children who were identified later are not given the full benefit of “overhearing” their caregivers talking. • So, they may not quickly “pick up” vocabulary words that are said throughout the day. • This makes it critical for parents to focus on informal language stimulation techniques. • If the child continues to have difficulty learning vocabulary, a hierarchy should be followed to TEACH the vocabulary.

16. Vocabulary Hierarchy • INPUT • COMPREHENSION • IMITATION • USE

17. Vocabulary Hierarchy Input: • Repeatedly say new words in meaningful context. • The child participates in the activity and listens.

18. Vocabulary Hierarchy Comprehension: • Ask the child to demonstrate comprehension of an idea. (Where is the ____?) • The child demonstrates comprehension by doing the action. He/She does not verbalize.

19. Vocabulary word: Throw • How to check for comprehension: • Playing with a child and you give them a ball. • You ask them to throw the ball. • The child then throws the ball. • Does the child have comprehension of the word “throw”?

20. Checking for Comprehension • ANSWER?

21. Checking for Comprehension • A more effective approach to check for comprehension of a word may be to hand the child sand and ask them to throw it! • If the child holds the sand and does nothing with it after you ask them to “throw” it, then they probably do not understand “throw.”

22. Vocabulary Hierarchy Imitation: • Teacher says the word and asks the child to repeat. • The child repeats the word.

23. Vocabulary Hierarchy USE: • Asks the child to use the word. (What’s that? Or Tell me about that?) • Child uses the word on his/her own.

24. What comes first?

25. PRACTICE!!

27. Strategies That promote auditory learning of language targets

28. Direct Strategies for INPUT! • Auditory Bombardment • Acoustic Highlighting • Modeling • Parentese

29. Informal Strategies for INPUT! • Self Talk • Parallel Talk • Descriptions • Repetition • Expansion • Expansion Plus

30. Imitation Strategies • WAIT TIME • Model + Expectant Look. • Have child tell another person. For example, “Tell Susie, ‘I need that one.’” • Give a choice of two words/phrases with the target language being the last choice. • LAST DITCH EFFORT: Can you say, “_____?”

31. Delayed Imitation StrategiesEncourage child to think on his own a bit more… • Ask another person a question then immediately ask the same question of the child. • Direct child to tell another person, e.g., say, “Tell Susie, ‘I need that one.’” Then direct him to tell 2 or 3 more people (or stuffed animals or dolls.)

32. Prompting For USE! • Stop talking. Provide frequent pauses in your input and WAIT for the child to initiate conversation. This may take several seconds or even close to a minute. Resist the urge to continually provide input. • Look expectantly at child and WAIT. • Lean toward child, cup your ear and WAIT. • Set up a situation in a way that creates a reason (other than to please the adult) for the child to communicate his ideas, i.e., give the child a puzzle board and keep the pieces or give the child half of what he needs to complete a task. (SABOTAGE!) • Begin a sentence containing part of the target and wait to let the child complete it.

34. Rate of Expressive Vocabulary Acquisition Vocabulary Goal: (to maintain “normal” rate of progress) Spontaneously produce a core vocabulary of 10 new words each week. How to determine this goal: Child currently has a vocab. age of approximately 2 yrs, (i.e. ___ words expressively). By this time next year, they will need to use approximately ___ words, (i.e. gain __ new words) over the next year. This equals approximately 10 new words each week (10 words x __ wks = ___ words).

35. Resources for Development of Expressive Vocabulary In the beginning: • “Power Words” *pdf • Lexicon 1 *pdf DON’T FORGET INCIDENTAL LEARNING AT ALL LEVELS!!!!

36. Resources for Development of Expressive Vocabulary • Ling Basic Vocabulary & Language Thesaurus Levels 1 & 2 (currently out of print) • Tina Bangs - 3 year old word list *pdf • Tina Bangs – Prepositions *pdf • Tina Bangs – Categories *pdf • Denver 230 Word List *pdf • Basic Word List – 250 words of highest frequency *pdf DON’T FORGET INCIDENTAL LEARNING AT ALL LEVELS!!!!

37. Resources for Development of Expressive Vocabulary Preparing for School: (formal reading instruction) • Ling Basic Vocabulary & Language Thesaurus Levels 3 (currently out of print) • Children’s Classic Literature • Synonyms • Reading Text Analysis Looking up definitions in a dictionary is not an effective way to teach vocabulary!!

38. Reading Text Analysis: Thundercake On sultry summer days at my grandma’s farm in Michigan, the air gets damp and heavy. Storm clouds drift low over the fields. Birds fly close to the ground. The could glow for an instant with a sharp, crackling light, and then a roaring, low, tumbling sound of thunder makes the windows shudder in their panes. The sound used to scare me when I was little…..

39. Reading Text Analysis Steps • You say the word • Child says the word back to you (ask the child to say the word back to you) repeating the word allows the word, child uses their auditory feedback loop, allows the word to get into their memory. • Give the child a definition of the word (simple def of what the word means….NOT WEBSTER!) • Use the word in a sentence • Ask child to use the word in a different sentence

40. How Does This Effect Children Who are Hearing Impaired? • Pre-teaching • What is it? • Who does it? • How much and when? • Why?

41. Prefixes, Suffixes and Root Words • Systematically teach children meanings of prefixes, suffixes and root words • The majority of English words are created through combining prefixes and suffixes with base words and word roots. • If a child understands how this process works, they possess one of the most powerful understandings necessary for vocabulary growth (Anderson & Freebody, 1981)

42. Link Spelling to Reading and Vocab. • Spelling knowledge applies not only to the ability to encode words during writing; importantly, it also underlies ability to decode words during the process of reading (Templeton, 2003a, 2003b). • Spelling patterns reflect meaning, which can lead to vocabulary growth • Bomb/bombard • Muscle/muscular • Compete/competition

43. Dictionaries, Thesauruses, References Teach the effective, efficient, realistic use of dictionaries, thesauruses and other reference works.

44. Word Learning Strategies • Research shows that students can be taught strategic behaviors to improve their ability to learn the meaning or words (Kuhn and Stahl, 1998). • Step 1: Carefully look at the word, decide how to pronounce it • Step 2a: Look around the word for context clues • Step 2b: Look in the word for prefixes, suffixes, base words and root words that might offer clues • Step 3: Make your best guess at the word’s meaning • Step 4a: If you don’t have a good idea of the meaning, use a dictionary or glossary. • Step 4b: If you think you’ve figured out the meaning of the word or if the word doesn’t seem important, keep reading.

45. Create awareness and interest in words • Just as children have varying language levels, they have varying degrees of interest in words. • It’s important to develop an interest in words. • Create “word-a-day” routines to focus on interesting, challenging words • Vocabulary notebooks to encourage children to write down interesting words they come across. • Use fascinating stories and word origin information to help increase student interest in words

47. Have you read to your child today? “Extensive research has proven that reading aloud to a child is the single most important factor in raising a reader”. J. Trelease

48. Have you read to your child today? • “The single most important activity for building the knowledge required for eventual success in reading is reading aloud to children.” • Events where in addition to reading aloud to stimulate an interest in books and reading, there is also a deliberate teaching of skills that will promote independence in reading, such as an increased vocabulary.

49. Wide Reading • The importance of wide reading in the growth of vocabulary is critical (Nagy & Anderson, 1984) • Staggering numbers of new words children learn each year are impossible to teach directly. Anderson (1996) estimates that would require teaching 20 new words every day of the school year. • Through wide independent reading, students come in contact with vocabulary that rarely occurs in spoken language • High level vocabulary isn’t being learned from TV or conversation!!! (Cunningham & Stanovich, 1998) Prime time television vocabulary is less challenging than the vocabulary in children’s books College graduate’s conversation includes vocabulary less challenging than preschool books

50. QUESTIONS??