Applying vocabulary - More than just writing sentences

Teaching vocabulary is tricky and can sometimes become monotonous if you don't change it up.  Often, we want to present vocabulary to students before reading, but then what?  Well, when I was at the IRC Conference a few weeks ago, I was reminded of this really simple, yet super effective activity.  It is called Interact with Vocabulary. Here's how it works.

After you've introduced vocabulary and have established definitions and examples using a technique like the Frayer model, it's time to apply the information.  Pre-write questions to ask.  Try to connect the vocabulary to your students' lives.  For example:

1. Name one thing that happens unintentionally in the hallways at school. [general Tier 2 vocabulary]
2. Why is the system of checks and balances important for you as a citizen of the United States? [social studies]
3. What is one reason you would measure perimeter of something? [geometry]
4. Why would one need quick reaction time? [health]
5. Name one popular song that would sound better piano rather than forte. [music]
6. What is an example of a network that teenagers may use every day? [computer tech]
7. Give an example from school of convection. [science]

Not every vocabulary term has practical life application, so you could also write your questions in perspective.  For example:

1. If you were a constructivist artist, which medium would you prefer and why? [art]
2. As a tyrant of a Greek city-state, what is one job that you would do well and why? [ancient history]
3. You are planning to build a bookshelf.  What tools should you plan to use, and why? [woodshop]

The next decision you'll have to make is how to have your students interact with their vocabulary.  If you're a teacher who needs proof of accountability, try the following ideas.  I'm an advocate for the interpersonal (social) student, so you'll see that these all include discussion:

• Type up the questions in a worksheet and have them record the answers from their discussion so that all of the group members has a copy.  Everybody's answers should match.  Share out as a class or conference with each group as discussions progress.
• Give each group a copy of the questions and have them discuss and record on a large piece of poster paper (more for your visual and kinesthetic students).  Share out with the class or conference with each group as discussions progress.  Post answers around the room after discussions.  
• Put up poster paper around the room and have the students carousel each of the prompts.  Give students forty-five seconds to a minute at each station.  
• For my digital-teachers, use Google docs and have all groups contribute to the same document in different colors.  Monitor what students are writing and conference with groups as misconceptions emerge.  Print a copy for each student.  

The title Interact with Vocabulary immediately indicates that more will be happening than just reading definitions.  Using student schema to learn, is a sure-fire way to ensure longer retention, but its also a great way to assess whether a student truly understands that meaning of the words.  But just as important is the idea that we should be choosing applicable vocabulary.  Educating our students is not just about taking words from a text book, it's about applying them.  It's our job to be sure that the words apply.  

What challenges do you see in using a strategy like this one?  Share those with us in a comment below. 

Vocabulary Unit 7 - NSA Spied on Gamers

Here is a link to the article I used for this unit.  Enjoy!

Unit 7 Vocabulary Plan
Unit 7 Answer Key to crossword puzzle and Jeopardy game
Jeopardy Game

Vocabulary Unit 6 - "Selfie Culture"

Here is the next vocabulary unit I finished today for our intervention SLC classes!  Enjoy!

Unit 6
"Selfie Culture" article
Mystery Word Bubbles
Jeopardy Game (if you can't get this to work properly, email me, and I will email you a copy or upload it and share it from my dropbox)
Jeopardy answers

August 23 CRISS Crumble - Choose Your Words Carefully

Welcome back, friends! This week has been one of adjustment for both students and staff as we move into another year of change, but I have already begun to see glimpses of normalcy throughout the day. By the end of next week, this place will be radiating with the routine hum of learning, and things will settle down.

So what is on the plate for our first Crumble, you ask?  Vocabulary is my focus for our students this year. Every year at the end of the year when we take a look at scores, we shake our heads and say, "I wish there was something more we can do for these kids to help build their vocabularies." But then we leave, hoping something will miraculously come to us (perhaps in a vision induced by overexposure to the sun) over the summer, and by the time we are back into the routine of things here at school in the fall, that wish is forgotten, only to be dredged up again in May. Please tell me that I'm not the only nerd who has this wish every year AND who thinks about it periodically over the summer!

A large percentage of our student population lacks basic academic vocabulary – plain and simple. A few years back I had an eighth grade student (formerly bilingual, but transitioned in fourth grade) whose social studies teacher reported that he "just didn't care" and refused to do the work. After meeting with this student a few times and just listening to him speak, it dawned on me how often I had to either repeat what I said to him or reword entire sentences until he understood what I had said or asked. If I had to do this with him one-on-one, imagine how he felt in a class filled with thirty students and a teacher who couldn't monitor his comprehension every second! So I asked the teacher to reflect upon her presentation style. How did she speak to the students? Her response was, "As adults." But my real question is - what kind of adults? Did she speak to them as if they were all adults who had a rich literate background like she did as a child? Or did she speak to them as if she herself had a rich literate background, but with an understanding that her students may need clarification on basic academic conversations due to lack of vocabulary? Her response was simply raised eyebrows and an, "Ohhhhhhh! Aha!"

To break it down for you, there are three tiers of vocabulary (and many definitions of these tiers, depending on who you ask):

• Tier 1 – basic vocabulary and acquired through every day speech
• Tier 2 – high frequency, academic / multiple-meaning words that appear across all types of text
• Tier 3 – low frequency, domain-specific / content-specific words often termed “vocabulary words” in content areas

Most of our kiddos have a good handle on how to speak to each other using Tier 1 vocabulary (some a little too much!). And we are doing a pretty decent job of exposing them to Tier 3 - but we assume that they can absorb what we are saying in front of our classroom using our Tier 2 words. This is not always the case. Words that we take for granted are being thrown out at our students without even realizing the damage we could be doing by not supporting our own rich use of vocabulary. In this paragraph alone there are probably a dozen or more words that have multiple meanings and would confuse even some of our hardest working strugglers. Words like handle, decent, exposing, assume, absorb, granted, and rich all have double meanings and make the heads of our English language learners spin like tops! And heaven forbid you use an idiomatic phrase (such as make your head spin) with them! They'd go off the deep end for sure. I really need to stop.

The point is, friends, that we need to choose our words carefully. Am I saying that we need to simplify how we say things for our students and stay away from using words that may challenge our kiddos? Heavens, no! In fact, I encourage the use of fancy words! But know that the more you use them, the more you will need to rephrase, check for understanding, illustrate, model, and allow for processing before you move on.

So, create a quiz with words in parenthesis near tough Tier 2 words where you think a student might trip up. Know that your text books are not only full of your content-area vocabulary, but they are also very heavily loaded with Tier 2 words that may confuse your students as well. Teaching Tier 2 words as vocabulary doesn't necessarily make sense in a science or social studies class, but don't assume that your kiddos are going to be able to understand the text book without a lot of support. Know that part of the job that I do at school is to help you service these students, not just in their language arts classes, but across the curriculum, and I am certainly willing to do so. And enjoy reflecting on your own vocabularies over the next week, because I know you will.

Have a fabulous first weekend of the school year.  You deserve it!

IRC Conference, March 14-16, 2013, Words are Wonderful

Words are Wonderful
Susanne Picchi & Margaret Richek

While at IRC I committed to hitting at least one session on vocabulary until I felt like I had some ideas and theories to mull over for a while.  Thank goodness the first session I chose was "the one".  After going to see Susanne Picchi and Margaret Richek speak on vocabulary acquisition, I had much to consider as I thought about how this information could be applied at school.

Picchi and Richek introduced their topic by showing their audience the slide to the right.  Interestingly enough, I realize now as I am writing this that I encountered this table just a few days ago when doing some extra reading on vocabulary instruction.  As stated in my most recent CRISS crumble, I think&nbsp our school is ready to really focus on vocabulary instruction.  Because of our demographics, our building already has a disadvantage in the area of vocabulary.  Around forty percent of our students speak a language other than English, and many of them grew up having little to no exposure in the language at all!  We also have a large percentage of those students who come from homes where books (in any language) are not very common, so their exposure to words in any language has been limited to what they have heard through basic conversation and television.  But just look at the exposure some of these kiddos are missing out on because they are not exposed to some of these things!  Even comics and magazines (which are not given much credit in our educational setting) are shown here as having richer and more challenging vocabulary than basic conversation and television.

Respected researchers and educators agree over and over again that one of the easiest ways to support vocabulary acquisition in our students is to expose them to new words regularly.  The more our students hear the words being used, the more words they soak up naturally.  When our babies, even before the age of one, begin to form words, we don't give them direct instruction in words like "more" and "no".  "Please" is one we might have to teach, but, generally speaking, our children learn these words by being exposed to them over and over again.  As the years go on, the process doesn't change, but the words do get harder.  I recall the word juxtaposed that a former choral director used over and over and over again during rehearsals.  After hearing the word a few times from his mouth, I began to encounter it in other readings - for whatever reason.  And soon I had a familiarity with the word that I hadn't before.  The other word that I loved is the word penultimate, also introduced to me by this same man, and I use this word whenever I can because it sounds cool!  How often does a single word become the "in" word to use, and soon every student walking down our hallway uses it.  Just last week, my third grade daughter brought the word epic home.  Really?  Now I'd heard the word used, but never in the way that it is being used today, so I looked it up.  Of course, on dictionary.com the third definition down said, "impressively great".  Ok.  I'll take it.  But it cracks me up the way words will just show up and then vanish from the mouths of our children -- all because of exposure.

So how can we support and increase those vocabularies?  Picchi and Richek gave some great suggestions, some of which are listed below:

• Expect students to practice saying the words out loud.  If I can't pronounce a word, I won't remember it, and I certainly won't use it.  For some of our kids, just the act of learning how to pronounce a word is all it will take to give the kid a self-esteem boost to actually try using the word.
• Use sentence starters.  Instead of asking students to define a word or use it in a sentence, ask them to give examples.  For example, "If I had to subdue a lion . . . " or "The obsolete computer was . . . ". 
• Demonstrate how you would use a dictionary. Don't just send the kids to the dictionary.  Have you seen those dictionary definitions? They're as complicated as the words themselves!  Define the words and give examples.
• Play a game.  The game Two in One is easy enough.  Let the kids play in partners or individually to come up with one sentence with as many of the words used correctly as they can.  Give them points (one word is one point, two words is three points, three words is five points, four words is seven points, and five words is ten points).  Allow students to change the form of the word.
• TEACH MORPHOLOGY.  Use strategies such as direct instruction, having students go into their real-world text and find examples of words using certain morphemes, have students create nonsense words from morphemes they have learned (this is my favorite and the most fun activity), have students create prefix, root, suffix cards and put them together to create words.
• Have students rewrite a sentence or paragraph in more common language (try the Pledge of Allegiance).
• Connect Two is demonstrated above to the right.  A list of words on both sides must be connected somehow, but this activity is not just a matching activity - students must justify why they connected the words.  Matching a word to a definition is not the object - it's finding true relationships between words.  It's kind of an extension to analogies in that the words could be connected because they're antonyms or because one word is an extension of another.  For each, as shown in the example, the student must write the justification under the word to show their thinking.  Kind of like showing your work in math.  Sometimes students will connect words with new ideas and teach the teacher a thing or two!
• Flashcards with pictures on the front to give students a visual cue.
• Have students "name a business" using vocabulary words.  For example: Egregious Odors - We eliminate the bad smell! Or Stereotype Hair Salon where you can get the new and trendy hairstyle EVERYONE has.
• Have students create pictures for each of the words and put them all onto a poster with a word bank.  Kids can use the poster to match the word to the picture.  This hits the kinesthetic and visual learners.

Each of the above activities made me think of ten more extensions for classroom application at school, and I'm excited to work on some of our teachers to get some implementation.  I heard, loud and clear, the challenge for teachers to use this language in their classroom settings and support the use of it by students in their classroom conversations as well.