Vocabulary Instruction and Learning

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Vocabulary Instruction and Learning

• Why? What? How?
• Jen Madison Lenny Vermaas

2
Reception Check

• Full Bars
• Or
• Dropped Call?

3
Vocabulary Instruction through Semantic Mapping

• Brainstorm words and phrases that deal with
  vocabulary instruction
• How can these ideas be classified into groups?
  What would you name the groups?
• Which ideas are most familiar, most unfamiliar?
  Which spur particular feelings or questions?

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Facets ofPurposeful Vocabulary Instruction

• Provide rich and varied language experiences
• discussion, focused attention on words, being
  read to, wide and frequent reading
• Teach word-learning strategies
• Using context, using morphology (word parts),
  using a dictionary
• Foster word consciousness
• Awareness, interest in words and their meanings,
  understanding of communicative power of language
• Teach individual words

(Graves, 2006)
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Essential Questions

• Why should I teach some words explicitly and what
  are the characteristics of effective direct
  vocabulary instruction?
• What criteria should I consider when choosing
  words?
• How might I introduce different kinds of terms
  most effectively?
• How might I encourage lasting and deep
  understanding of important vocabulary?

6
Vocabulary Instruction and Learning

• Why should I teach some words explicitly, and
  what are the characteristics of effective
  vocabulary instruction?

7
Reflections Forward Thinking
8
Objectives

• Explain why teaching individual words explicitly
  is important.
• Understand the characteristics of effective
  vocabulary instruction

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Research Snapshots

• Musical Cards
• Trade cards while the music plays.
• When the music stops, partner with the person
  currently trading with you.
• Read each card and together distribute 7 points
  between the two cards to represent the degree of
  importance and relevance toward the question
  Why should I teach some words explicitly?

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Why should I teach some words explicitly?

• Which reasons are most compelling to you?
• What concerns or questions must be addressed?

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Reception Check

• Full BarsDecent ReceptionDropped Call?

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Vocabulary Instruction and Learning

• What are the characteristics of effective,
  explicit vocabulary instruction?

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Effective Vocabulary Instruction

• Vocabulary instruction should focus on critical
  words
• Effective vocabulary instruction does not rely on
  definitions.
• Teaching word parts enhances understanding.
• Different types of words require different types
  of instruction.
• Active engagement improves learning.
• Repeated exposure is essential.

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Characteristics of Effective Direct Vocabulary
Instruction (Marzano, 2004)

• Effective vocabulary instruction does not rely on
  definitions.
• Students must represent their knowledge of words
  in linguistic and nonlinguistic ways.
• Effective vocabulary instruction involves the
  gradual shaping of word meanings through multiple
  exposures.
• Teaching word parts enhances students
  understanding of terms.

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Characteristics of Effective Direct Vocabulary
Instruction (Marzano, 2004)

• Different types of words require different types
  of instruction.
• Students should discuss the terms they are
  learning.
• Students should play with words.
• Instruction should focus on terms that have a
  high probability of enhancing academic success.

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Run the Tournament Most relevant, interesting
to learn

• Use a tournament bracket to decide which
  characteristic is most relevant or interesting.
• Line up the eight characteristics (randomly).
• For each pair, decide which should advance.
• Once a winner is decided, choose one consolation
  characteristic from any of the other seven.

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Run the Tournament Most known/implemented

• Use a tournament bracket to decide which
  characteristic you most readily use in your
  current instruction.
• Line up the eight characteristics (randomly).
• For each pair, decide which should advance.
• Once a winner is decided, choose one consolation
  characteristic from any of the other seven.
• Share your strategies for the winning
  characteristics!

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Vocabulary Instruction and Learning

• What criteria should I consider when choosing
  words?

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Objectives

• Understand criteria for selecting words to teach
  explicitly.
• Evaluate words from a unit or reading material
  based on appropriate criteria.

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Reflections Forward Thinking
List 5 to 10 words that you currently teach (or
are planning to teach) explicitly.
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Questions Worth Asking

• Is this word unknown?
• Is this word critical to understanding (the
  particular text, the particular subject matter)?
• Is this a word students are likely to encounter
  again (in sophisticated language use, in this
  particular subject, in other domains)?
• Is this word conceptually difficult (abstract,
  new concept, multiple meanings)?
• Does this word have high instructional potential
  (morphology, connections to other words, word
  learning)?

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Vocabulary instruction should focus on critical
words.
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Purpose for Teaching

• To understand a specific text better
• To learn a specific concept and its label
• To improve comprehension of texts in general
• To increase ones understanding of some aspect of
  generative word knowledge
• To improve writing

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Criteria to Consider

• Utility
• instructional potential
• outside of particular school context
• generativity
• Importance
• reading comprehension (particular selection,
  general comprehension)
• content-specific achievement
• Conceptual difficulty

• Word Knowledge
• prior knowledge
• necessary understanding
• Relationship to other important words
• morphological (word parts)
• semantic (categories of meaning)
• Frequency Distribution
• rate of occurrence in English text

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Word Knowledge

• Word Knowledge Continuum
• No knowledge
• General sense
• Narrow, context bound knowledge
• Knowledge, but inability to recall readily enough
  for application
• Rich, decontextualized knowledge of meaning,
  relationship to other words, extension to
  metaphorical uses

Depth of Understanding
(Beck, McKeown, Kucan, 2002)
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Vocabulary instruction should focus on critical
words.

• Utility
• instructional potential
• outside of particular school context
• generativity
• Importance
• reading comprehension (particular selection,
  general comprehension)
• content-specific achievement
• Conceptual difficulty

• Word Knowledge
• prior knowledge
• necessary understanding
• Relationship to other important words
• morphological (word parts)
• semantic (categories of meaning)
• Frequency Distribution
• rate of occurrence in English text

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Types of Words

• Literary
• Found in reading and sophisticated speaking
• relatively low frequency
• flustered, rambunctious, yelped
• General academic
• words found in academic discourse (text speech)
• relatively high frequency, wide distribution
• specific, analysis, method, achieve

• Content-specific
• necessary for content achievement
• relatively low frequency
• electoral college, algorithm, gerund, dénouement,
  photosynthesis
• School-task
• labels for academic tasks
• summarize, Venn diagram, journal, learning log

(Hiebert Lubliner, in press)
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Word Hierarchy
(Beck, McKeown, 1985)
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Vocabulary instruction should focus on critical
words.

• Utility
• instructional potential
• outside of particular school context
• generativity
• Importance
• reading comprehension (particular selection,
  general comprehension)
• content-specific achievement
• Conceptual difficulty

• Word Knowledge
• prior knowledge
• necessary understanding
• Relationship to other important words
• morphological (word parts)
• semantic (categories of meaning)
• Frequency Distribution
• rate of occurrence in English text

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Conceptual Difficulty

• Known concept that can be expressed with a
  one-word synonym or familiar phrase
• Often found in narrative text
• Often can be learned from context or understand
  essential meaning of text without deep word
  knowledge
• altercation (fight)
• apologize (to say youre sorry)

• Unknown concept that can be learned from
  available experiences information (background
  knowledge)
• naive
• independence
• embarrassment
• nostalgia
• elation

(Nagy, Anderson, Herman, 1987 adapted from
Hiebert, 2008, presentation)
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Conceptual Difficulty

• divide (as boundary between drainage basins)
• democracy
• periodic sentence

• Unknown concept requiring learning of new factual
  information or related system of concepts
• Less likely to be learned from context
• Understanding meaning often necessary for
  comprehension of academic text
• Often more abstract
• Often polysemus (having multiple meanings)

(Nagy, Anderson, Herman, 1987 in Hiebert, 2008,
presentation)
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Vocabulary instruction should focus on critical
words.

• Utility
• instructional potential
• outside of particular school context
• generativity
• Importance
• reading comprehension (particular selection,
  general comprehension)
• content-specific achievement
• Conceptual difficulty

• Word Knowledge
• prior knowledge
• necessary understanding
• Relationship to other important words
• morphological (word parts)
• semantic (categories of meaning)
• Frequency Distribution
• rate of occurrence in English text

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Morphological Families

• Morpheme smallest unit of meaning
• Roots
• Prefixes
• Suffixes
• Meaning of a word can be inferred from the
  immediate ancestor with reasonable help from
  context one exposure learning would be
  possible (Nagy Anderson, 1984).

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Semantic-Relatedness

• Words that fit into categorical clusters

cognitive/affective/communication prepare
confused accomplished groan healed winced
motions associated with objects (sometimes living
things) bouncing gusted
ignite crammed overturned nicked
Verbs
physical movements of people/animals chasing grip
grasped raid burrowed straining
(Hiebert, 2008, presentation)
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Vocabulary instruction should focus on critical
words.

• Utility
• instructional potential
• outside of particular school context
• generativity
• Importance
• reading comprehension (particular selection,
  general comprehension)
• content-specific achievement
• Conceptual difficulty

• Word Knowledge
• prior knowledge
• necessary understanding
• Relationship to other important words
• morphological (word parts)
• semantic (categories of meaning)
• Frequency Distribution
• rate of occurrence in English text

36
Questions Worth Asking

• Is this word unknown?
• Is this word critical to understanding (the
  particular text, the particular subject matter)?
• Is this a word students are likely to encounter
  again (in sophisticated language use, in this
  particular subject, in other domains)?
• Is this word conceptually difficult (abstract,
  new concept, multiple meanings)?
• Does this word have high instructional potential
  (morphology, connections to other words, word
  learning)?

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Reflections Forward Thinking

• Review your list of words.
• Does each match your purpose?
• Based on the appropriate criteria, does each
  merit instructional time and energy?

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Vocabulary Instruction and Learning

• How might I introduce different kinds of terms
  most effectively?

39
Reflections Forward Thinking
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Objectives

• Know (and ultimately use) different types of
  instruction to explicitly teach different types
  of words.

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For the strongest possible results
(Graves, 2006)

• Include both definitional and contextual
  information.
• Involve students in active and deep processing of
  the words.
• Provide students with multiple exposures to the
  word.
• Review, rehearse, and remind students about the
  word in various contexts over time.
• Involve students in discussions of the words
  meaning.
• Spend a significant amount of time on the word.

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So many wordsso little time.

• Often, it will be necessary to teach words in
  ways that do not consume large amounts of time
  and do not produce the strongest possible
  results. In these cases, think of your initial
  instruction on a word as just thatinitial
  instruction, an initial experience that starts
  students on the long road to learning a full and
  rich meaning for the word.
• (Graves, 2006, 70)

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Word Learning Tasks

• Learning a basic oral vocabulary
• Learning to read known words
• Learning new meanings for known words
• Learning new words representing known concepts
• Learning new words representing new concepts
• Clarifying, enriching the meanings of known words
  
• Moving words into expressive vocabularies
• Building English learners vocabularies

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Experience Observe

• Strategy observer
• What steps/processes did you observe?
• Participant observer
• What words, behaviors, evidence of student
  learning did you notice?
• Participants
• What did you learn? What worked for you? How
  did you feel as a learner using this strategy?

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Quick Introduction

• Learning new words for known concepts in text
• During read-aloud
• Before students read text
• Read-aloud
• Provide known synonym/descriptive phrase after
  the word (without disrupting the narration)
• Prior to student reading
• Display or quick note with target word and known
  synonym/descriptive phrase
• Preview descriptions provided in textbooks
  (supplement as necessary)

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Context-Relationship

• Learning new words representing known concepts

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Indolence

• Fortunately, none of my English 9 R students
  could be described as indolent. Whereas an
  indolent student would try to sleep during class,
  slouch in her seat, procrastinate, and generally
  avoid exerting any effort, my students are
  diligent, hard-working, eager, and
  achievement-driven. I would be worried if
  someone described an English 9 R student as
  indolent, because it is worse than just
  occasional tiredness or laziness. Indolence
  implies a tendency to be lazy much of the time.

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Indolent means

• often lazy
• sometimes lazy
• often hardworking
• sometimes hardworking

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Observe Vocabulary Instructional Routine

• What instructional steps were used to introduce
  each of the words?
• For which kinds of words / word learning tasks
  would this routine be most appropriate?
• What other effective instructional practices are
  worth noting?

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Vocabulary Instructional Routine
Anita Archer
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Observe Vocabulary Instructional Routine

• What instructional steps were used to introduce
  each of the words?
• For which kinds of words / word learning tasks
  would this routine be most appropriate?
• What other effective instructional practices are
  worth noting?

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Vocabulary Instructional Routine

• Learning new words representing known concepts
• Introduce the word
• Present a student-friendly explanation
• Illustrate the word with examples
• Check understanding
• Review a group of words

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Jigsaw Which methods, which words?

• Read assigned section
• Discuss with table group and prepare to share
• Gist of section
• a method or two worth further study
• Number off at your table meet with like numbers
  to share

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Building Academic Vocabulary The Six-Step
Method

• Marzano, R. (2004). Building background
  knowledge for academic achievement. Alexandria,
  VA ASCD.
• Marzano, R. (2005). Building academic
  vocabulary Teachers manual. Alexandria, VA
  ASCD.

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Please answer

• Should teachers focus their direct instruction of
  vocabulary on sesquipedalian terms?

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sesquipedalian

• etymology (analysis of word origins parts)
• sesqui (Latin, half as much again)
• ped (foot)
• -ian (one that is, one who)

• Examples
• antidisestablishmentarianism
• pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis
• floccinaucinihilipilification

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sesquipedalian
Nancy and Sluggo
Everything that coruscates with effulgence is not
ipso facto aurous . --All that glitters is not
gold.
lthttp//www.wordsources.info/words-mod-sesquipedal
ian-1-16.htmlgt
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Please answer

• Should teachers focus their direct instruction of
  vocabulary on sesquipedalian terms?

61
Experience Observe

• Strategy observer
• What steps/processes did you observe?
• Participant observer
• What words, behaviors, evidence of student
  learning did you notice?
• Participants
• What did you learn? What worked for you? How
  did you feel as a learner using this strategy?

62
Building Academic Vocabulary Steps 1 - 3

• Introduce word
• Student friendly descriptions, examples,
  explanations, images, etc.
• Must connect to students prior knowledge
• Students generalize meaning
• Students create nonlinguistic representation

• Caution!
• Monitor understanding carefully
• May require more than one session

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Research on Imagery as Elaboration
Students who used imagery to learn vocabulary,
on average, performed
of studies
(Pickering, 2007, ASCD presentation)
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magnify

• word parts
• magn (large, great)
• -ify (v. to do)

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antagonist

• Etymology
• anta-, against
• agon, contest
• -ist, one who

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Building Academic Vocabulary A Six-Step Process

• Introduce word
• Student friendly descriptions, examples,
  explanations, images, etc.
• Must connect to students prior knowledge
• Students generalize meaning
• Students create nonlinguistic representation

• Engage students in word activities
• Discuss words
• Engage student play with words

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Massed vs. Distributed Practice

• 24 focused practices to achieve 80 competency
  (Marzano, Pickering, Pollock, Instructional
  Strategies that Work, p. 67)

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Semantic Mapping

• Clarifying and extending the meanings of known
  words
• Display central concept.
• Students (in groups) list as many related words
  as possible.
• Discuss and display student words in broad
  categories, name the categories, and suggest
  others.
• Discuss central concept, other words, related
  categories, and interrelationships.

69
Vocabulary Instruction

• How might we revise our groups and words? Can we
  add any important ideas?
• Which ideas are most familiar, most unfamiliar?
  Which spur particular feelings or questions?

70
Geometric Check
This (These) ideas square with my beliefs or
current practice.
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(No Transcript)
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Vocabulary Instruction and Learning

• How might I encourage lasting and deep
  understanding of important vocabulary?

73
Objectives

• Understand the importance of distributed practice
• Identify relevant strategies for classroom
  implementation