Transcript Six Step Vocabulary Instruction

Opening Exercise
 Read - Pair – Share
 Read what research has to say about vocabulary
instruction.
 Mark three findings that resonate with you.
 Share/discuss these findings with a partner
Plan for this hour
 Familiarize self with research
 What we’re doing
 Why we’re doing it
 Selecting vocab.
 Watch video (25 minutes)
 Practical approaches
 Walking through steps 1,2,3
 Playing with steps 4,5,6
 For more information: Marzano’s Building Academic
Vocabulary
What findings support what we’ll
be looking at today?
 The first reason that vocabulary instruction often fails
to produce measurable gain in reading comprehension
is that much of the instruction does not produce a
sufficient depth of word knowledge. (Nagy, 1988, as
cited in Honig et al, 2000)
 A reader has about a 5 percent chance of learning
a new word fully from encountering it only once
in print. Therefore, when specific words are key to
understanding a concept, intentional, explicit
instruction in word meanings is efficient and
productive. (Nagy, Anderson and Herman, 1987)
More research
 “[L]earners can very quickly get a sense of a word’s
meaning…But full understanding…occurs only over
time and multiple encounters.”
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(Beck et al, 2002).
From “Improving Adolescent Literacy:
Effective Classroom and Intervention
Practices.” US Department of Education*.
 Recommendations for providing explicit vocabulary
instruction
 Dedicate a portion of regular classroom lessons to explicit
vocabulary instruction.
 Provide repeated exposure to new words in multiple contexts,
and allow sufficient practice sessions in vocabulary
instruction.
 Give sufficient opportunities to use new vocabulary in a
variety of contexts through activities such as discussion,
writing, and extended reading.
 Provide students with strategies to make them independent
vocabulary learners.
What do you think …
 What does it mean to really know a word?
 Word knowledge is
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Complex
Multi-dimensional
Incremental
Interrelated
 What does it take to really know a word?
 Explicit instruction
 Repeated exposures
 sufficient opportunities to use new vocabulary in a variety of
contexts through activities such as discussion, writing, and
extended reading.
Which words to teach? Ideally…
 Process used by committee to generate district-wide (or school
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wide) list of terms is divided into five phases.
Decide on number of words to be taught at each grade level and,
by extension, across a grade-level interval (K-2, 3-5, 6-8,or 9-12)
or a multi-grade span (e.g. K-6 or K-12).
For each academic content area in program, create a rankordered list of words important to grade-level interval or multigrade span by selecting words from list.
Add words that reflect local standards and curriculum materials.
Based on length of these lists, determine how many terms
should be taught in each academic area.
Generate final list of terms for each academic area by making
additions, deletions, or other alterations.
Which words to select?
 Building Academic Vocabulary Teacher’s Manual lists
7,923 terms in 11 subject areas extracted from national
standards documents, organized into four grade-level
intervals: K-2, 3-5, 6-8, and 9-12.
Which vocabulary do I teach?
• Target words for instruction that are
– Necessary for understanding the text
AND
– Essential to understanding topic
not just
 Useful and interesting words
Developing your own selection
criteria (in a pinch)
Interesting Hawaiian Words
you might like to know
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Aloha
Humuhumunukunukuapua’a
Hokunaho’oikaika
Ulalena
Huli
Haole
Kama aina
Mahalo
Hana
Pau
kokua
Keiki
Da kine
Shishi
Words necessary and essential to
teachers who might like to work in
Hawaii
 Mahalo
 Hana
 Pau
 Keiki
 Kokua
 Haole
 Da Kine
25 minutes
Our words
 Mahalo
 Hana
 Pau
 Keiki
 Kokua
 Haole
 Da Kine
Step One: Provide a description,
explanation, or example of the new
term
 Teacher provides and explanation or example
 What do students know or think they know about the
term?
 What do students know about parts of the word? (roots,
prefixes, suffixes)
 Offer explanation or example in common, everyday
language
 NOT a dictionary definition
Step Two: Ask students to restate
the description, explanation or
example in their own words
 Students put in into their own language – this allows
students hook the new learning with what they already
know
 Write a description – put in own language so you can
remember and understand it
 This engages students and helps them retain the
meaning and help them use it later
 Check for understanding
 If student has only a partial understanding, clarify the
concept
Step Three: Ask students to
construct a picture, symbol or
graphic representing the term
 Idea is to have them transfer the learning to a different
modality and translate their understanding of the
word into images
 Rate how well they know the word
First three steps
 Gives them a chance to reflect on it and see where
their learning is.
 Process does not take a lot of time if it’s done on a
consistent basis
 Gives kids enough time to absorb the terms
Next three steps
 Deepen understanding
Games
Discussions
Activities
Student Draws
Student explains
Teacher
describes
Categories of Instructional Strategies That
Affect Student Achievement (Marzano)
Category
% Rate
Identifying similarities and differences
45
Summarizing and note taking
34
Reinforcing effort and providing recognition
29
Homework and practice
28
Nonlinguistic representations
27
Cooperative learning
27
Setting objectives and providing feedback
23
Generating and testing hypotheses
23
Questions, cues, and advance organizers
22
Step 4: Engage students
periodically in activities that add to
their knowledge of the term
 Teacher engages students in activities that allow them
to add to their knowledge of the word
 Move the student from superficial to deeper
understanding of the term.
 If we exposed to it multiple times, the understanding
sharpens.
 Teacher has to plan activities that allow students to go
back and re-experience the words –
Engaging activities that help
students process their learning
 Classify words into categories
 Make analogies
 Creating metaphors
 Free association
For our purposes
 Classify the words
 Put them into at least two different categories based on
what you know
 Be prepared to explain why you did what you did
Step 5: Ask students to discuss
terms with one another
 Give groups of students questions about words
 Students talk to others, explain what they know, compare what they
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know with what others know
This allows for multiple exposures and the social aspect of learning
Pair up with students with similar background experiences (ESL)
How do students interact with others?
Students ask each other questions to understand they know the
vocabulary for themselves
Students automatically work through meaning and ask, “How has my
understanding of this word changed?”
Make notes as they revise their understanding of the terms and re-rate
their understanding
Their notebook entries can help you identify who needs further
instruction or review
Question to answer in groups
 What are the words that would be used by students?
Why?
 What are some words that would be used by teachers?
Why?
 What are some words that would be used by staff?
Why?
Step 6: Involve students in games
that allow them to play with terms.
 Students are asked to play
 Games – students are experiencing words over and over
again
 They are also associating fun and enjoyment with the
word
Vobackulary
 I hold up a word behind a student’s back
 People in the class try to give you clues as to what the
word is so you can figure it out.
What do you need to implement
six-step process
 Time!
 If time is invested on front end, you don’t have a lot of
review at the end
 The process is designed to meet needs of students as
you go along, not a lot of review
 All six steps together allows you to introduce words in
a non-threatening ways and allows students to process
words multiple times in a multitude of ways and have
fun with the words
The Book…
 Building Academic Vocabulary by Robert Marzano
Mahalo!
Aloha ---