Voracious Vocabulary Instruction

1. Voracious Vocabulary Instruction Teaching General Academic and Content-Specific Vocabulary Across the Disciplines Presented by Laura Heflin

2. Importance of Vocabulary • Contributes to comprehension, fluency, and achievement. • Research shows high correlation between vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension • Academic language is difficult to learn as it is not used in everyday language, but it is necessary for accessing academic content • Important to dual-code words in memory with print and nonlinguistic forms (visual and sensory)

3. 3 Tiers of Words Common Core State Standards, Appendix A, page 33 • Tier 3 – Highly specialized, subject-specific; low occurrences in texts; lacking generalization • E.g., lava, aorta, legislature, circumference • Tier 2 –Abstract, general academic (across content areas); encountered in written language; high utility across instructional areas • E.g., vary, relative, innovation, accumulate, surface, layer • Tier 1 – Basic, concrete, encountered in conversation/ oral vocabulary; words most student will know at a particular grade level • E.g., clock, baby, Illinois State Board of Education- English Language Arts Content Specialists

4. Why are “academic words” important? They are critical to understanding academic texts. They appear in all sorts of texts. They require deliberate effort to learn, unlike Tier 1 words. They are far more likely to appear in written texts than in speech. They often represent subtle or precise ways to say otherwise relatively simple things. They are seldom heavily scaffolded by authors or teachers, unlike Tier 3 words. Common Core State Standards, Appendix A, page Illinois State Board of Education- English Language Arts Content Specialists

5. Selecting Words to Teach • Teaching fewer words in depth is more effective than teaching many words at the surface level • Focus should be on words that are key to comprehension and that are frequently used by adults in everyday conversation, reading, and writing • Curious, gazing, mysterious, stingy, scrumptious, drowsy

6. Choosing words • Jose avoided playing the ukulele. • Which word would you choose to pre-teach? Which word? Illinois State Board of Education- English Language Arts Content Specialists

7. Avoided Why? • Verbs are where the action is • Teach avoid, avoided, avoids • Likely to see it again in grade-level text • Likely to see it on assessments • We are going to start calling these useful words “Tier 2 words” • Why not ukulele? • Rarely seen in print • Rarely used in stories or conversation or content-area information Illinois State Board of Education- English Language Arts Content Specialists

8. How do I determine that a word is TIER 2? Illinois State Board of Education- English Language Arts Content Specialists

9. What about Tier 3 Words? • Words that are associated with specific domains or content areas should be taught as they are encountered, usually during content area instruction • Morpheme, peninsula, similes, nucleus, protons

10. How Many Words? In school settings, students can be explicitly taught a deep understanding of about 300 words each year. Divided by the range of content students need to know (e.g., math, science, history, literature), of these 300–350 words, roughly 60 words can be taught within one subject area each year. It is reasonable to teach thoroughly about eight to ten words per week. (Chall, 1996) Illinois State Board of Education- English Language Arts Content Specialists

11. Implications for Instruction Teach fewer words. Focus on important Tier 2 (high utility, cross-domain words) to know & remember. Simply provide Tier 3 (domain-specific, technical) words with a definition. Illinois State Board of Education- English Language Arts Content Specialists

12. Vocabulary Resources

13. Wordle • Creates a word cloud to indentify key vocabulary in a digital text • http://www.wordle.net/create • Gettysburg Address http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/gettyb.asp

14. Wordsift • Great pre-reading activity for digital or inputted text • Sorts words in text according to difficulty • Identifies academic words and most-represented words • Shows a collected of related images, a word map, and lists sentences from the text that present the word in different contexts • http://wordsift.com/ • http://www.scholastic.com/browse/article.jsp?id=3757754

15. Tag Galaxy • Creates a 3-D orbiting galaxy of words and their associations. You click on a word/globe to populate images of that word from Flicker • http://taggalaxy.de/ • Eg. Type “fossil”

16. Glossary • Frayer Model • Definition, use in a sentence, explanation of importance, drawing, synonym, antonym, part of speech • Teacher can provide for unit/academic vocabulary • Students can create to deepen understanding of spelling words

17. Teacher Provided Glossary Entry

18. Student Created Glossary Entry

19. Flashcardstash • Dictionary based website • Sign up for a free account to create and store word lists to support written text • Can access definitions, example sentences from context , and pictures to support the word • Create a set of digital flash cards to practice the words with no-nonsense games and quizzes. • http://d97cooltools.blogspot.com/2011/07/wordstash-is-online-vocabulary-building.html

20. Podcasts • Use video (eg. Flip Camera) to define word, use it in context, explain its importance, and provide oral practice activities • Teacher can create to introduce or reinforce vocabulary • Students can create to take ownership of their learning and access higher-level thinking skills • Can be published online to extend learning beyond the classroom • Research shows students who had access to podcasts were more motivated to learn vocabulary and indicated that podcasts helped them learn new vocabulary

21. Podcast Examples • General Vocabulary Podcast – unanimous- LL Cool J http://www.sesamestreet.org/play#media/video_82f54b85-b421-4311-969b-56c693b38fa2 • Math Podcast http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Pmk1xLv8w0

22. Free Rice • Provides a word with 4 synonym choices • Adjusts difficulty based on your response • Correct answers donate 10 grains of rice to needy countries • http://freerice.com/#/english-vocabulary/1426

23. Other Resources • Common Core Math Vocabulary Cards to Print Out http://www.burke.k12.nc.us/curriculum/elementary/Pages/Common-Core-Resources.aspx • Common Core Math Vocabulary Practice by Grade/Standard http://www.spellingcity.com/math-vocabulary.html • English/Language Games http://www.vocabulary.co.il/ • Scientific Inquiry http://www.spellingcity.com/view-spelling-list.html?listId=5601730 • Wordia- videos to make personal connections http://www.wordia.com/

24. Create Your Own Podcast • I have vocabulary words and visuals for social studies, science, reading, and math • Define word • Use it in context • Explain its importance or use • Provide oral practice activities • Think about how you could teach a vocabulary word and provide students with a visual to create their own podcast as reinforcement of their learning