Vocabulary in the Content Areas

EDRD 7715Dr. Alice F. Snyder

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Standards for Reading Professionalsas Related to Chapter Five (Vocabulary)

Standard 6: Word Identification, Vocabulary, and Spelling

Use effective strategies to foster ongoing development of independent vocabulary acquisition

Teach students to use context to identify & define unfamiliar words

Teach students to monitor word identification through syntactic, semantic, & grapho-phonemic cues

Teach students to recognize & use spelling patterns to aid in word identification

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“Types” of Vocabularies

Listening Vocabulary—words a child hears and understands but may not use in his everyday speech or writing

Speaking Vocabulary—words he learned initially by imitating others--he hears, understands & uses in speech but not in writing or recognizes in reading

Reading Vocabulary—words a child recognizes in print form & understands simple meanings

Writing Vocabulary—learned mainly in school--words child recognizes in print form in reading, uses in speaking, understands when he hears, & uses in his writing---smallest vocabulary b/c doesn’t use same # of words in writing that are used in L, S, R

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Other Vocabularies Potential Marginal Vocabulary—all words child might

be able to determine meanings of by using context clues, analyzing morphemes (meaningful word parts, such as prefixes, suffixes, root words), or knowing word derivations

Receptive Vocabulary--listening & reading Expressive Vocabulary--writing and speaking Concept—general idea, an abstraction derived from

particular experiences with a phenomenom, often abstract; develop slowly over time [democracy, gravity, truth, integrity]

Label—a name for a concept [often all we do is teach labels for concepts, but kids aren’t given time to develop understanding of concepts behind the labels!]

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To KNOW a word…The process of learning a word to really KNOW a

word involves “establishing relationships between concepts, organization of concepts, and expansion and refinement of knowledge about individual words”(Beck & McKeown, 1996, p.790).

Therefore, children must be given opportunities to make words part of their personal knowledge. It requires providing multiple exposures in a variety of contexts & opportunities for children to work with words, to encourage them to use words in their everyday speech at home & school

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Dale’s Four Stagesof Word Knowledge (1965)

Stage 1: (Unknown) Never saw the word before.

Stage 2: (Acquainted) Have heard it but do not know what it means.

Stage 3: (Established) Recognize it in context and know it has something to do with...

Stage 4: (In-depth) Know the word well. Can use it in variety of ways and contexts both in writing

and speaking & understands it in reading and when heard in variety of contexts

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Graves’ Six Tasks of Learning Words

Task 1: Learning to read known words. (bicycle)

Task 2: Learning new meanings for known words. (sound, change, train)

Task 3: Learning new words that represent known concepts. (round=rotund, spherical, circular)

Task 4: Learning new words that represent new concepts. [most difficult word learning task]

(cataract)

Task 5: Classifying and enriching the meanings of known words.

Task 6: Moving words from the receptive to the expressive vocabulary.

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Vocabulary and Cognition

Two cognitive tasks related to vocab learning

1. Establishing associations between words

--hearing new labels for known concepts, using it multiple times, engaging in a few activities that expose the student to the new label for that concept

2. Developing conceptual knowledge about words

--learning new conceptual knowledge and new labels for that concept; requires more extensive, deliberate instruction with multiple exposures to the word best presented in frameworks that show how they are related to other concepts and st’s BK

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Seven Guiding Principles for Classroom Vocabulary Instruction

1. Building experiential background—provide a variety of rich experiences with learning words- talking over experiences; learning concepts vs. learning labels;

2. Relating vocabulary to background—relate new words to any experiences students may have; schema (Pearson, 1984; Thelen, 1986-file folders in the brain)

3. Building relationships—showing how new words are related to other words (Henry, 1974)-joining, excluding, selecting, & implying [4 basic cognitive operations associated with building relationships among wds]

4. Developing depth of meaning—in place of writing definitions, have students finish sentence stems; examine subtle shades of meaning with words; use context clues; pre-teach difficult words and their meanings before reading; teach multiple meanings of words

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Seven Guiding Principles for Classroom Vocabulary Instruction, cont.

5. Presenting several exposures—students should build on multiple sources of information to learn words through repeated exposures. (10+ times to learn words at a more in-depth level of word meaning [Beck, McKeown, & Omanson, 1987])

6. Create an interest in words—kids genuinely love to learn new words, especially big words…it makes them sound “grown up”; give them opportunities to become “Word Wizards” (Beck & McKeown, 1983) to learn new words, use them outside the classroom, in the home, etc., and then come back the next day and report to the class how they used the word; Blachowicz & Fisher, 2004)

7. Teaching students how to learn new words—help them become independent learners of words by teaching morphemes and what they mean as well as teaching various types of context clues, and other ways to determine word meanings so they don’t have to rely on others to tell them

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How Do You KnowWhich Words to Focus On beforeYou Begin the Reading or Discussion?

1. Is understanding the word important to understanding the selection in which it appears?

2. Are students able to use context or structural analysis skills to discover the word’s meaning?

3. Can working with the word be useful in furthering students’ context, structural analysis, or dictionary skills?

4. How useful is this word outside of the reading selection being currently taught?

(Graves, 2000)

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Three Tiers of Words (Beck, McKeown, & Kucan, 2002)

Tier 1: most familiar words; about 8000 word families; known by average 3rd grader; learned incidentally without formal instruction (i.e. sad, go)

Tier 2: about 7000 word families; important to academic success; not limited to content area words (i.e. privileged, ridiculous)

Tier 3: relatively rare, make up an additional 73, 500 word families students may encounter between K-12; include content area words (i.e. isotope, estuary)

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Strategies for Teaching Vocabulary Read, read, read!--once children can decode, they

are empowered to read, read, and read, with greater fluency, vocabulary, and word knowledge by-products of such reading, all of which contribute to comprehension skills.

Reading as little as 10 minutes a day helps with word acquisition, general language development, increased understanding of world around them, & reinforces goal of developing lifelong readers. 20 minutes a day doubles the results!

Teacher Reading Aloud (Shared Reading)—Helps develop struggling readers’ vocabulary knowledge along with others

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Strategies, cont. Sight Word Banks/High Frequency Word Banks—

use children’s literature as source, esp. useful for ELL students in grades 3-5

Context Clues—useful in the process of reading a text, but not the only strategy to use in order to learn a word’s meaning in-depth; types of context clues (see next 2 slides)

**When teaching children to use context clues, explain value of using context clues, find good examples in children’s literature that STs will be reading, model how to derive meaning from various types of CCs, provide opportunities for STs to practice in class activities & encourage independent application

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Types of Context Clues

1. Definition/explanation– Brownies are omnivores. Omnivores eat both plants and animals.

2. Appositive—On a clear summer morning, a pod, or group, of close to 50 dusky dolphins moves toward deeper water.

3. Synonyms—Next day he had a little chill and a little fever. Ma blamed the watermelon. But next she had a chill and a little fever. So they did not know what could have caused their fever “n” ague.

4. Function indicators—The derrick lifted the glider into the sky.

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Types of Context Clues, cont.5. Examples—Only 5 percent of cheetah cubs live to

become adults. The remainder die from disease, starvation, or attacks from other predators, such as. lions.

6. Comparison-Contrast—You should always know where on the field your teammates and opponents are.

7. Classification—Gordie was born on March 31, 1928, in the town of Floral, in the province of Saskatchewan.

8. Experience—Suddenly the hedge clippers caught a branch, and my left index finger was pulled into the blades. I felt an excruciating pain. The tip of my finger was hanging by a thread.

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Strategies, cont.

Learning Synonyms and Antonyms**synonyms-words that have similar meanings**antonyms-words that have opposite meanings

Using a Thesaurus and Dictionary—What do students need to know (skills, concepts) in order to use a thesaurus and dictionary effectively in grades 3-5? Brainstorm…

Semantic Word Maps—based on our understanding of cognition…that we learn by categorizing and classifying; can be pictorial first, then move to word only—Best type of semantic word map is Schwartz & Raphael, 1985 Concept of Definition Map—for words that represent Concepts; see examples:: See Schwartz Concept of Definition Map—for a more conceptual approach to developing word meanings and concept understanding

[See Snyder’s Word Analysis Map (SWAM)—for a more definitional approach to developing word meanings]

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Strategies, cont. Word Webbing—graphically illustrates how to

associate words with each other to build a concept in meaningful ways by making connections between what child knows about words & how words are related

Vocabulary Venn Diagram- 2-4 circles for one word with 2-4 different meanings

Semantic Feature Analysis (SFA)—relates words and concepts or features associated with the words, placed on a grid or matrix; students determine whether each feature is or is not related to the word or term being studied; STs code with (+) if yes, (-) if no and (?) if not sure; becomes great study guide afterwards b/c STs see common features of variety of the terms, uncommon features, etc.

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Strategies, cont. Morphemic Analysis—morphemes are the smallest unit of

meaning in words*prefixes (come before root words)*suffixes (come after root words)*roots words (can’t stand alone; other words are created from them; often originates from other languages)*base words (can stand alone; have no smaller meaning parts)*inflectional endings—’ing’, ‘ed’, ‘s’, ‘es’, ‘ies’, ‘ied’, ‘ier’, ‘est’, etc., these don’t carry meaning…they are more functional, they alter the case, gender, number, tense, form of the word*compound words—two or more base words put together; new word may have literal, concrete meaning or may be concrete but not touchable or have implied meaning*contractions—shortened forms of words where letter(s) removed & replaced by apostrophe

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Strategies, cont. Independent Word Knowledge Learning--VSS

*Word Knowledge Rating Scale-good for teacher to determine students’ prior knowledge of words before instruction*Word Walls—Thematic Word Walls*Playing with Words-make it a daily activity- Word of the Day; Sesquipedalian Words (such as: hyperpolysyllabicsesquipedalianist; hippopotomonstrosequipedaliophobia)*Homophones—words that sound the same but are spelled differently & have different meanings [sea/see; night/knight]-*Homographs—words that are spelled the same but have different meanings and are pronounced differently*Figurative Language—idioms, similes, metaphors, etc.

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Diverse Learners & Vocabulary Acquisition

Biggest inhibiting factor in ELL STs’ ability to read & understand English is their lack of vocab knowledge—often know concepts but not labels for concepts in English; cognates (words that are similar in English and the second language)

Ways to help build vocab knowledge for ELL, & disabled readers; hearing impaired*personal word files of essential vocab words [ for good list of critical words STs should know & understand; survival words]*environmental print word packets [cut out from everyday objects, i.e. cereal boxes, cleaning items, etc. along with their pictures]- STs can manipulate them in many ways*word walls (thematic word walls)*sniglets—for gifted & above average readers

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Technology and Vocabulary Instruction

Hoagies’ Gifted Education Page Education4Kids:www.edu4kids.com/ Enchanted Learning Dictionary:

www.enchantedlearning.com/Dictionary.html Merriam-Webster Word Central:

www.wordcentral.com/ Wacky Web Tales: www.eduplace.com/tales/ Word Play: www.wordplays.com Vocabulary University: www.vocabulary.com