Transcript Rutgers - K-3 FINAL HANDOUT

Kevin Flanigan, Ph.D.
West Chester University
[email protected]
Agenda
 Principles and Components of Effective Vocabulary
Instruction
 Vocabulary Strategies
 Research-based
 Instructional “bang for your buck”
 Questions
Relationship between Vocabulary and
Comprehension
 Vocabulary knowledge is one of the strongest
predictors of reading comprehension (Anderson &
Freebody, 1981; Davis, 1941)
 Vocabulary instruction has a strong relation to text
comprehension (McKeown, Beck, Omanson, &
Perfetti, 1983)
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Vocabulary of a high school graduate?
College graduate?
 High school graduate?
 25,000 – 50,000 words (Nagy & Anderson, 1984)
 College graduate ?
 60 – 75,000 words (Crystal, 1995)
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The mathematics of vocabulary
instruction
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Lake Wobegon School District
20 words per week
X 36 weeks per year
720 words per year
X 13 years
9,360 words
Uh oh . . . .
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3 General Components of
Vocabulary Instruction
(Templeton, Bear, Invernizzi, & Johnston, 2009)
 Overall Context (reading, writing, rich discussion)
 Direct Vocabulary Instruction
 Word-specific (teaching specific words)
 Generative (teaching how words work)
 Word Consciousness – a positive attitude and
disposition toward learning words
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Have you ever?/Word Wizard
(Beck, McKeown, & Kucan, 2002)
 Purpose: to connect new words to known concepts and
encourage students to notice examples of words in
contexts outside of school (or outside of “formal
instruction”)
 Procedure:
 Choose Tier Two words and ask students to bring back
examples from home (“I saw a radiant sunset last
night!”).
 For each word used, the student, group, or class earns a
points toward class competition and/or grade, extra
credit.
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Let’s try it
 Agog – very excited; impatiently eager
 “While waiting for the train to take him home, the
soldier was agog about his homecoming.”
 Saturnine – sullen, gloomy, depressed
 “The teacher’s saturnine demeanor put a damper on
any joy or excitement among the children.”
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Two Points!
 When I found out we were going to have our third
child, I was agog! However, after I calculated the
number of diapers that would need changing over the
course of three years, I became slightly saturnine.
Principles of Vocabulary Instruction
(Blachowicz & Fisher, 2000)
 The students should:
 Be ACTIVE and ENGAGED in developing their understanding of
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words and ways to learn them.
PERSONALIZE word learning.
Be IMMERSED in words (listening, speaking, reading, writing).
REPEATEDLY experience words across a VARIETY OF RICH
CONTEXTS.
Learn new words/concepts by RELATING them to existing
words/concepts.
Learn both SPECIFIC WORDS and strategies for INDEPENDENT
word learning.
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Word Wizard
 List students’ names on board in classroom
 Students earn points for bringing examples of words
“from the world” back to class
 To earn a point, student must demonstrate knowledge
of the word’s meaning – “Dad, this boy in our class is
SO supercilious.”
How were YOU taught
Vocabulary?
Clue Review Word Bank
Example
zealous
tangible
strut
agog
saturnine
dote
harmony
stroll
swagger
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Clue Review/Taboo
 Purpose – to review concepts repeatedly,
actively, across a range of contexts
 Procedure
 Concept/words are written on cards.
 Pairs – (a) clue giver, (b) clue detective.
 Clue detective places card on his forehead, so she can’t
see it, but clue giver can see it.
 Clue giver provides clues to clue detective for each word.
 Pairs switch roles.
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Clue Review
 Tips
 Can’t do “sounds like Nunion!”
 Definition/clue must relate to essential elements of that
word/concept (For George Washington, can’t say, “Dude
with the wig!”).
 Pair up ELL and native language speakers. Native
language speaker can be first clue giver to provide a
language model for ELL.
 Use word bank as scaffold.
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Clue Review
 Switch pairs to hear multiple ways of defining the
same word/concept.
 Taboo tournament!
 Every student in class is actively engaged 100% of the
time.
 Homework assignment with parents/siblings.
 Collect words on rings, in soap dishes, baggies, in
notebooks, or coffee cans.
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Applause, Applause
(Beck, McKeown, & Kucan, 2002)
 Clap to indicate how much you would like to be
described as:
 Saturnine?
 A doting mom, dad, aunt, sister?
 Compassionate?
 A GADFLY?
Thumbs up/thumbs down
(Beck, McKeown, & Kucan, 2002)
 Would a tough drill sergeant dote on his soldiers?
 Is a car tangible?
 Is love tangible?
Word Associations
(Beck, McKeown, & Kucan, 2002)
 Which word goes with a model walking down the
runway? Why?
 Which word goes with a bully? Why?
 Which word goes with a grandparent giving their
grandchildren all the candy they can eat? Why?
Sentence Expansion
(Santa, Havens, & Valdes, 2004)
 Purpose
 To expand/extend vocabulary into writing
 Excellent revision strategy/use with “cemetery words”
 Procedure
 On strips of paper, write Boring Sentences such as
“The boy ate his ice cream.”
 In pairs, students rewrite the sentence with more precise
vocabulary such as, “The famished boy devoured his
double chocolate scoop cone.”
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 The man went to the
party.
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Music Puzzler
(Townsend, 2009)
 Write down your favorite song(s).
 Use the target words this week to describe your
favorite songs.
 Does your song make you want to strut or swagger?
Why/why not?
 Does it make you feel saturnine or agog? Why/why
not?
 Does it give you a feeling of harmony?
Picture Puzzler for “tangible”
(Townsend, 2009)
Picture Puzzler
 Present a picture(s) to the students that is somehow
related to the target word.
 Ask students to write in their vocabulary notebooks
how they think the picture is related to the word’s
meaning. Write-pair-share.
 Students share with entire class. Teacher clarifies
misconceptions.
 Excellent assessment of student understanding of
word.
Concept Sorts
(with power thinking)
 Take any set of concepts, vocabulary words, sentences,
story events, and mix them up!
 Students must reorganize them.
 Promotes understanding of the “pieces” and how the
pieces “relate” to each other – the structure.
Cramming on the Farm
Selected Resources
 Beck, Isabel L., McKeown, Margaret G., and Kucan, Linda. Bringing Words to
Life: Robust Vocabulary Instruction. New York: Guilford, 2002.
 Nagy, W.E., & Anderson, R.C. (1984). How many words are there in printed
school English? Reading Research Quarterly, 19(3), 304– 330.
 Santa, C.M., Havens, L.T., & Valdes, B.J. (2004). Project CRISS: Creating
Independence through student-owned strategies (3rd edition). Dubuque, IA:
Kendall/Hunt.
 Templeton, S., Bear, D., Invernizzi, M., & Johnston, F. (2010). Vocabulary their
way: Word study with middle and secondary students. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.