Learning all-purpose academic words Catherine E. Snow

1. Learning all-purpose academic wordsCatherine E. Snow Harvard Graduate School of Education CREATE, 6 September 2007

2. Welcome & Housekeeping • Discussion/Interactive Format • Quick Polling • Type messages into chat area • Break for responding to chat questions/comments • Those on just the teleconference can email questions to: eventquestion@wested.org

3. Quick Poll: Who is Online? Your primary profession • elementary school teacher • secondary school teacher • school, district, or state administrator • curriculum coordinator • staff development specialist/trainer • post-secondary educator or administrator • researcher • other

4. The ultimate goal

5. Poll: What are the biggest challenges to comprehension of content area texts in the middle grades? Pick top two: • Word reading difficulties • Fluency • Motivation • Vocabulary • Background knowledge • Syntax • Text structure

6. My focus is vocabulary • A complicated domain • Relation to reading • Reading comprehension, obviously • But also early reading, perhaps via Lexical Restructuring • Large social class differences • Related to density of word exposure • Related to quality of word exposure • Related transactionally to literacy experience

7. How is vocabulary related to • Word reading? • Fluency? • Syntax? • Background knowledge? • Comprehension?

8. My focus is middle school • SERP principle: start with the most urgent problem as defined by the practitioners • Reading for learning becoming an urgent challenge at this age • Social class differences becoming alarming • Possibly the last good chance for intervention with struggling students

9. Linking vocabulary to school reform • The structure of the U.S. middle school • Large • Departmentalized • Little coordination across years or content areas • Many plagued by low internal accountability • The focus of U.S. education reform: primary grades, inoculation model • Lack of preparation/willingness among content area teachers to teach content area reading • SERP Principle: work on student learning, teacher learning, organizational learning together

10. Our work in Boston • Teacher surveys and interviews surfaced vocabulary as a problem • Assessments (DRA, GRADE) confirmed it • Classroom observations: • Teachers teach vocabulary rarely • Disciplinary, not all-purpose academic, vocabulary focused on • All-purpose words crucial for understanding texts, especially glossaries • Texts to be read are difficult and unengaging • Lively classroom discussion is rare • Thus, Word Generation

11. Word GenerationProgram Goals: • Student level: Build knowledge of high frequency academic words in various contexts • Teacher level: Promote regular use of effective instructional strategies • School level: Facilitate faculty collaboration across grades, across departments

12. Research-based Principles of Vocabulary Instruction: From Studies of Young Children • Establish and discuss joint attentional focus • Ensure affective engagement • Engage children in using the words • Ensure recurrent exposures • Celebrate successes • Encourage experimentation

13. Research-based Principles of Vocabulary Instruction: From Studies of School-aged Children • Pick the right words • Present them in motivating ways (texts) • Provide learner-friendly definitions • Ensure recurrent exposures • Expand each word’s semantic mapping • Provide opportunities to use the words • Teach word-learning strategies (morphology, inferring from context) • Motivate ‘word awareness’

14. New Challenges in Middle Grades • Most students know the easy words already • Basic object terms • Brief/monomorphemic forms • Really frequent words • Minimally polysemous words • Or most frequent meaning of polysemous words • Much word exposure comes through reading • Students need content-area technical terms • Students also need all-purpose academic words • Category labels • Words for thinking • Abstract, low imageability terms

15. Reflective Question • In your experience, what kinds of words do middle school struggling readers have trouble with?

17. All-purpose academic words, e.g. • Words for thinking: hypothesize, evidence, criterion • Words for classifying: vehicle, utensil, process • Words for communication: emphasize, affirm, negotiate • Words for expressing relationships: dominate, correspond, locate http://www.vuw.ac.nz/lals/research/awl/index.html

18. Previous efforts along these lines

19. Principles of VIP • Present words in context • Pick topics that ensure word recurrence • Provide native language support • Teach explicitly about cognates, morphology, polysemy, and inferring word meanings • Teach spelling linked to word meaning

25. So • We can teach vocabulary to 4th-6th graders • Both ELLs and EOs But • We didn’t shrink the gap • And, most disturbingly, the intervention disappeared when we did

26. Reflective Question Why would teachers not continue to use the VIP after the end of the study?

27. The Word Generation Approach • Summer 2006: 20-week curriculum designed, two schools (grades 6-8) plus one teacher (grade 5) recruited • 2006-2007 Piloting • 20 weeks implemented in 5th grade classroom, 12 weeks in two entire schools • Pre- and post-testing • Writing samples collected, partially analyzed • Classroom observations, teacher interviews, student surveys • Summer 2007: design year two of curriculum • 2007-2008: larger scale implementation • 2009-2010: clinical trial with randomization at school level

28. Word GenerationProgram Features • Words selected from the Academic Word List (AWL) • Materials designed for all content-area teachers • Expectation of at least 15 instructional minutes a day • Flexibility for school-specific implementation models

29. Word Generation: Materials (year 1) • 20 weeks, each focused on a set of 5 words • Controversies include: global warming, censorship, dress codes and schools, steroids and sports, censorship and hip-hop, junk food and schools, the nature of American culture, etc. Monday Paragraph introduces words Tuesday-Thursday Content-area word activities Friday Writing with focus words

30. WEEK 8 Global warming: What should be done? Global climate statistics suggest that the average temperature of the earth's surface is increasing. For example, the warmest ten years of the 20th century were between 1985 and 2000. Another statistic indicates that surface temperatures have risen by about 1˚F since the late 1800’s. Though this change may seem small, it has raised the ocean level by 4-8 inches. This is because more snow and ice are melting into the sea. Many scientists support the hypothesis that global warming is linked to heavier storms, floods, and other extreme weather. They attribute these changing environmental conditions to human activities like driving cars that use a lot of gas. Scientists believe that people contribute to global warming through burning fossil fuels (coal, oil, and natural gas). Such activities increase certain gases that trap the sun’s energy inside the atmosphere and warm the earth. This is called the greenhouse effect. Scientists say that this warm period is not just part of the earth’s natural climate cycle. This trend does not fit the usual pattern of warm periods followed by cool periods. Scientists project that temperatures will keep rising if we continue to ignore the impact of our activities. Should people be allowed to drive SUVs? Should companies be allowed to make them? Should the government invest in exploring other energy sources? Who is responsible for preventing future destruction?

31. Midweek activities • Social studies: debates of various sorts, social-studies specific uses of the words • Math: studying graphs, math problem of the week, math-specific uses of the words • Science: science problems, sentence starters using target words, science-specific uses of the words

32. Pause for clarification questions about VIP or WG design

33. Westfield Middle School 80 % Black 16% Hispanic 1.8 White 1.6 Asian 29% Special Education MCAS Reilley Middle School 62% Black 18.1 % Hispanic 9.3% White 8.9 % Asian 25% Special Education MCAS Pilot Schools/Demographics

34. Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) Results 2006 (ELA) • Westfield • Reilley

35. GRADE data/6th grade

36. Two Vocabulary Assessments at Pre- and Post-testing Vocabulary Self-Check (VSC) • student gauges his/her own level of knowledge about a word (40 items= 30 WG words and 10 non-words Multiple Choice (Pre-WG) • 30 WG words chosen from 100 WG words to be taught over 20-week intervention “I do not “I have “I know something “I know it well know it” heard of it” about it” and can use it.”

37. PRE-VSC Across Grades, from least to most well known

38. Multiple Choice (Pre-WG) Sample items 1. She indicated that she was hungry. □ a. denied □ b. thought □ c. showed □. d. indeed 2. He will analyze the information. □ a. ignore □ b. anchor □ c. remember □ d. examine

39. Analysis Across Grades for Multiple Choice Pretest

40. WG measures correlate with each other, r = .47**

41. WG measures correlate with the GRADE Vocabulary subtest for 6thGraders

42. WG measures correlate with the GRADE Vocabulary subtest for 6thGraders

43. WG measures correlate with the state ELA accountability assessment

44. Pre-WG Measures & MCAS Reading Scatterplot of MCAS Reading and Pre-WG MC (n=349) Scatterplot of MCAS Reading and Pre-WG VSC (n=349) mcas_2: MCAS Reading score (Spring 2006) mc_pct: %correct on Pre-WG Multiple Choice Test mcas_2: MCAS Reading score (Spring 2006) vsc_sum: total correct on Pre-WG Vocabulary Self-Check (Spring 2007)

45. Students who know more than 85% of WG pretest words pass the MCAS

46. Students need to know at least 80% of the WG words to do well on the MCAS

47. So… • The tests work pretty well • And correlate with other important outcomes But… • Does the intervention work?

48. Break to Review Chat Questions

49. Reilley Multiple Choice Pre- and Posttest Results

50. Westfield Multiple Choice Pre- and Posttest Results