Practical Strategies for Building Vocabulary

Differentiating Vocabulary Instruction for ELLs

Agenda

1. Opening Activity: Glummer and who?2. Turn and Talk: Reading in a ‘new’

language3. Group Discussion: What did

Glummer show us?4. Mind the Gap: Reflect and post your

suggestions 5. Brainstorming: Partnerships brainstorm

strategies 6. What’s Next: Whole-group share of

best practices

Objective: Collaborate in creating a bank of vocabulary-building strategies for ELLs

Glummer and Breetib

Looking at a text through the eyes of an English learner

Glummer and Breetib were in the plozee tecking grulby wernies and voding zibby kinnups. Glummer’s kinnups looked naffostical! But Breetib’s kinnups were too slunky.

1. Where were Glummer and Breetib?

2. What were they doing there?

3. How did Glummer’s kinnups look?

4. How were Breetib’s kinnups?

5. What can Breetib do to improve his kinnups?

6. Is the plozee a good choice for tecking and voding? Why or Why not?

Vocabulary Preview

● plozee

● wernies

● zibby

● kinnups

● slunky

Turn and Talk Protocol

My questions and observations:My partner’s questions and observations:

●I’m wondering if…

●I noticed that…

●My partner, _______, is curious to know if…

●My partner, _______, noticed that…

Guiding Questions:

1.What was it like to read a text in a foreign language?2.How did you begin to ‘decode’ the text? 3.Why were you able to figure out some of the text? 4.What strategies did you use?

What does Glummer and Breetib show us?

●Learning to read in a second (or new) language can be…

●Fortunately, once you have a basic understanding of ___________, you can begin to…

●As language specialists, we have the opportunity to help students unlock some of these keys to their new language.

Group Share OutAfter discussing Glummer’s naffostical kinnups…

●What were some of your partner’s observations or questions?

●What were some things you agreed on? Looked at differently?Similar approaches Different approaches

Why is vocabulary is so essential to literacy development and content-

area learning?

Mind the Gap

Vocabulary GapMiddle and high school ELLs are often talented at basic interpersonal communication skills (BICS), which often masks their difficulty in attaining content and academic literacy proficiency. 

Central to this discrepancy between the two is the vocabulary load that middle and high school learners suddenly face.  Nagy and Anderson (1984) estimate that students need to know 88,500 word families to understand their content-area texts (in Fisher, Rothenberg, and Frey (2007), yet Nagy and Herman (1984) found that only 10% of needed vocabulary was learned through direct instruction.http://www.readwritethink.org/professional-development/strategy-guides/supporting-vocabulary-acquisition-english-30104.html

Impact of Limited Vocabulary on Comprehension

● For younger students, deficits in vocabulary and background knowledge can limit their comprehension of grade-level, content-area concepts.

● For older students, their level of vocabulary acquisition directly impacts their reading fluency and comprehension (Barnett, 2001).

●Unless students know 85-95% of the words they read, comprehension is impeded (Samuels, 2002).

● You cannot explicitly address all of the vocabulary that your students will encounter.

● Not to worry! There are skills and strategies that students can use to continuously build academic language.

What can we do to support our ELLs?Teachers must make Tier 2 and 3 vocabulary learning a priority to ensure that English learners can access the Common Core curriculum.

●Vocabulary instruction must be explicit and targeted, with attention to visual, auditory, and tactile learning styles. ●Vocabulary must also be taught in context: through reading, writing, and discussing content-area topics.●Targeted vocabulary must be incorporated into the guiding questions and language patterns used to steer lessons and discussions.

Brainstorming SolutionsWhat gaps have you and your partner noticed?

How can we address these gaps?

Vocabulary-building resources for stakeholders

Closing the Gap

Collaboratively designing strategies that meet individual student needs

●Strategically including visuals, props, real-life experiences, and other avenues to language learning.

●Integrating the language modalities within literacy lessons to provide more interactive learning experiences.

Components of Effective Vocabulary Instruction

High Quality Oral LanguageCollaborative Learning Experiences❖Shared texts which include specific text structures and vocabulary.❖Interactive writing experiences which highlight key vocabulary. ❖Role-plays and readers’ theatre.

Turn and Talk Strategies ❖Guiding questions which incorporate: (1) specific sentence patterns and (2) targeted vocabulary.❖Sentence and paragraph frames to support students in drafting, orally rehearsing, and revising their writing.

Direct Instruction●Explicit teaching of vocabulary makes

content-area learning more comprehensible for ELLs.

●ELLs need a variety of strategies when learning vocabulary:

●Word-work, focused on a set of weekly vocabulary words

●Personal word (sentence) walls, in student notebooks

●Visuals, sound clips, and artifacts to make meaning more concrete

●Graphic organizers and language frames

Graphic Organizers and Language Frames

Guiding questions and language frames to support students in extending their language.

Activities for Different Learning Styles

Example from Read, Write, Think:

(Grades 3 – 12)

http://www.readwritethink.org

Tactile Learners: Cubing

Build Background Knowledge●During our

Renaissance unit, 5th-grade students visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art ~ NYC.

●Media clips focused on content themes

●Project-based learning experiences and trips

●Manipulatives to make words more concrete

●Graphic organizers to support note-taking

Explicit Instruction in Text Types

●Introducing students to rigorous texts, rich in vocabulary

●Modeling strategies for annotating and breaking apart complex texts, with a focus on different text types:●Cause and effect●Problem and solution●Sequence of events●Describing and listing

●Highlighting and practicing text types, in different contexts:●Turn and talk, using guiding questions ●Interactive and shared writing

Which strategies would work for your students?

●Turn and Talk

●Share Out

Feedback FormWhat are you taking away from today’s workshop?● Provide 2 or 3 ideas

or suggestions from today’s work:

What questions do you still have?● Share some

questions you still have: