by Jolanta Maria Nitoslawska-Romer, M.Ed.
International Director of Academic Affairs, BE+Live
If we want our students to understand and learn from a text, they need to become proficient readers. This means that they need to understand the words in any text they read. Research tells us that roughly 80% of reading comprehension is about understanding word meanings. Vocabulary is an important predictor of overall reading comprehension (Baumann, Kame’ enui, & Ash, 2003. When readers know many words, they can read more complex texts.
To know a word means knowing it in all of the following dimensions:
· The ability to define a word
· The ability to recognize when to use that word
· Knowledge of its multiple meanings
· The ability to decode and spell that word *
We all know that vocabulary instruction is very important, but it is not usually very effective or even engaging. Frequently, students get vocabulary lists to study and memorize by rote, which students, parents, and teachers dread. In our BE+Live program, we support teachers by organizing the Key Words that appear in the Learning Log or the Awesome Reader into three categories: Basic, High Frequency, and Content-Specific. For English Language Learners, vocabulary development becomes especially important, but teaching vocabulary can be challenging. If you focus on these tips and principles, you will see results in higher reading levels, better writing and stronger use of English.
1.- Integrate vocabulary into what the students are already reading
Students build their vocabularies mostly through reading. If students read 60 minutes per day, five days a week, they will read more than 2,250,000 words per year. Mason, Stahl, Au, and Herman (2003) estimate that this level of reading will result in students learning 2,250 words per year, far more than could ever be taught through direct instruction alone. **
Make teachable moments out of interesting words encountered in authentic reading experiences. Then explain the vocabulary by role playing or pantomiming. Use gestures, show real objects, point to pictures, draw quick drawings on the board. To ensure mastery of the words, after explaining the meaning, provide examples of how it is used. Ask them to find the words in the texts, ask students to repeat the word three times, engage them in some activity to develop mastery, and then ask them to say the words again.
2. Focus on cognates
Cognates are words that are derived from the same original word or root, many times from Latin or Greek. No, you don’t need to worry, just know that about 40% of all English words have similar cognates in Spanish. Make sure that our students are aware of these words but beware of false cognates. Thus, conversation and “conversación” or Director and “Director” have the same meanings, but “formar” is not always “form”: “formar un cubo” means “form or make a cube”, but “formar alumnos” is not “form students” but rather “educate students”, neither does “asistir” always mean assist, it can mean attend.
3. Scaffold
Scaffolding means providing the support students need as they are learning. Here are some ways you can scaffold vocabulary in your classroom:
– Use a graphic organizer to group words by semantic fields.***
They can be personal ones or whole class posters, made by each student, or by teams or by the whole class
– Have a general word wall, as well as one for a specific unit or term. Review the words daily.
Engage the students in setting it up, adding to it, or swapping out words as needed.
– Label drawings and pictures in the classroom.
– Provide sentence frames and lexical chunks as needed so that students can communicate more effectively with you and their peers. Focus on the language structures and functions your students need to master.
4. Provide repeated exposure
To understand and use words correctly, students need repeated exposure in a variety of ways. This should occur over a period of days and weeks rather than one or two days. Aside from Word Walls, graphic organizers, and the above ideas, use cloze sentences, word sorts, word mapping and word games. This will encourage many ways of talking about words and engaging in meaningful activities with words.
5. Make it game-like
Create opportunities for students to play Word Games such as Scrabble, Wordshake, Whirly Word, Word Seek, or Anagram twist. They can play by themselves and share their scores, or play with a partner, even online! Make games a regular event in your classroom, rather than playing only after students’ work is done. There are lots of ideas in our BE+Live program or online.
LAST NOTE: Please be aware that copying words and their definitions from a dictionary has very little value as students are not connecting the words to authentic reading. In a Canadian study, Scott, Jamieson-Noel, and Asselin (2003) found that 39% of vocabulary teaching time had to do with definitions, mostly through dictionary and worksheet use. We recommend that teachers focus on four significant aspects of word learning: wide reading, selecting words to learn, modeling word solving, and providing opportunities for students to grow their vocabularies via collaborative conversations. Teaching vocabulary as an isolated skill does not help students use language for learning about the world.
“All learning is social; vocabulary instruction should leverage interactions between teacher, student, and text such that students are continually growing in their ability to describe, explain, and query.”
Fisher & Frey
CLICK here to send your comments, questions or concerns.
References:
https://www.smartbrief.com/original/2020/05/8-ways-make-vocabulary-instruction-more-effective
accessed July 20, 2020
https://www.colorincolorado.org/article/selecting-vocabulary-words-teach-english-language-learners
accessed July 20, 2020
https://www.readingrockets.org/article/content-area-vocabulary-learning
accessed July 20, 2020
http://www.readingrockets.org/article/teaching-vocabulary
accessed Feb. 18, 2017
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/6623/b1b78fcbb4b9e243c95ba9e1dc9a95666206.pdf
accessed July 12, 2015
* Colorín Colorado
** Reading Rockets
**A semantic field is a group of words that talk about the same general phenomenon. They are not necessarily all synonyms.
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