Building vocabulary

Without specialized instruction, children missing 4,500 words in Grade 2 might suffer a word deficit of 60,000 by the time they leave high school. “That hole grows over time,” Hetty Roessingh says (Professor, University of Calgary, Werklund School of Education, 2015 


ACADEMIC VOCABULARY

Vocabulary that ELLs need to learn to be functional students is sorted into three tiers:

Tier 1 words consist of basic words. These words usually do not have multiple meanings and do not require explicit instruction for English speakers but do require explicit instruction for ELLs. Sight words, nouns, verbs, adjectives, and early reading words occur at this level. Examples of Tier 1 words are book, girl, sad, clock, baby, dog, and orange. There are about 8,000 word families in English included in Tier 1.  

Tier 2 contains high-frequency words that occur across a variety of domains. Tier 2 words present challenges to students who primarily meet them in print. Tier 2 words consist of such words as coincidence, masterpiece, absurd, industrious, and benevolent as well as academic terms we often use at school such as define, predict, analyze and compare . Because Tier 2 words play an important role in direct instruction, there are certain characteristics that these words have:

Tier 3 consists of words whose practical use and frequency is low. These words are domain-specific and are used for brief periods of time when we are studying particular content. Tier 3 words are central to building knowledge and conceptual understanding within the various academic domains and should be integral to instruction of content. They include medical, legal, biology and mathematics terms such as circumference, mass and aorta. 

Teachers typically provide direct instruction of Tier 3 words, but in order for ELLs to make strong gains in achievement, we need to also focus on Tier 2 words. These are fairly common words, so we assume that students know them. However, ELLS will not likely learn them on their own and it is these terms that will help them go further in their learning and improve their academic English language proficiency.

In addition, many children are coming to school with decreased vocabularies. It is more important than ever to focus on exposing them to as many new words as possible. If you think of vocabulary as a measure of how much background knowledge students have on a topic, then it follows that the more words they know about a topic, the more they can apply critical thinking skills: discuss, predict, infer, etc. 

Source: Marilee Sprenger, ASCD, 2013. http://www.ascd.org/publications/books/113040/chapters/What-Does-the-Research-Say-About-Vocabulary%C2%A2.aspx



Grade 7-8 Point of View with Content and Language Objectives: Sample Lesson

https://vimeo.com/130650405

resources to support teaching Academic Vocabulary

Teaching Academic Vocab - Kinsella.pdf
How to increase academic vocabulary.pdf
Academic Word List Families
Academic Language Function Toolkit.pdf

Many ELLs struggle with reading fluency which might appear, at first, to be due to struggles with word recognition (phonological awareness and phonics). However, in many cases these struggles are often due to weaknesses in vocabulary, knowledge of sentence structure and phrasing, and insufficient exposure to print. 

Source: http://www.lexialearning.com/resources/white-papers/understanding-unique-instructional-needs-english-language-learners

ONE TEACHER'S EXPERIENCE

I used to select vocabulary words from a text and pre-teach them prior to reading the text as a class...The practice of pre-teaching, though, was not really the problem.  The problem was the type of words I selected to teach; they were not often frequently-used across various disciplines. Despite the fact that the word “thatched”, for example, is not as widely used across content classes as the word “significant”, I devoted a disproportionate amount of time to teaching words like it that gave little return on investment.   

I developed this process after reading Bringing Words to Life: Robust Vocabulary Instruction by Beck, McKeown, and Kucan (2002). Of all the books about teaching vocabulary, this is my most trusted resource.  They described a concept called “Academic World Lists” (AWL), which are sets of the high-utility, Tier 2 words that are found most frequently across academic texts such as journals, reports, and newspapers (Coxhead, 2000). The Tier 2 list consists of 570 words including “contain”, “factors”, “significant”, and “effect”...  

And, I have repeatedly seen how words taught using this process are used in other classes. 

Tan Huynh, Blogger

http://www.empoweringells.com/a17-tier-two-words/

Strategies for Teaching Tier 2 WORDS

Concept Attainment

Teacher identifies a key concept students need to understand and prepares a set of visual images. Teacher leads students through a deductive process of examples and non-examples to see if they can determine the concept and its key characteristics. This strategy invites students to use critical thinking to apply a hypothesis, activate prior knowledge and build a deeper understanding of the concept. 

http://www.learnalberta.ca/content/ieptLibrary/documents/en/is/concept_attainment.pdf

Frayer Model

This strategy, developed by Frayer, Frederick & Klausmeier in 1969, is a useful for learning new vocabulary words in any subject. This strategy works best when highlighting a few key words that students need to master in the unit of study rather than attempting to repeat this strategy with 20 vocabulary words for the unit. Students should write the definition in their own words. The examples and non-examples help students distinguish what is unique to this concept and what does not fit with this concept. 

Depending on the concept, teachers may choose to replace non-examples with a heading that better helps students understand the term, such as illustration (see example to the right), real world application, or sample word problem.

For more ideas on how to use this strategy: http://www.learnalberta.ca/content/ieptLibrary/documents/en/is/idea_builder.pdf

Picture Word Inductive Model 

This approach involves labeling all the concepts seen in a photo and then extending to oral and written activities. 

http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2013/11/07/the-best-ways-to-modify-the-picture-word-inductive-model-for-ells/

Image source: https://mmegc.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/imgp32961.jpg

Picture Word Induction Model

Academic Vocabulary generated from K - 4 Alberta Curriculum with Tagalog translations to support Filipino students 

analzing verbs with pictures.pdf
evaluating verbs with pictures.pdf
applying verbs with pictures.pdf
understanding verbs with pictures.pdf
creating verbs with pictures.pdf
Remembering verbs with pictures.pdf

Academic Vocabulary - Grade 6-8 Science

18 units designed to target academic words such as compare, inference, hypothesis, evidence, etc. Click pdf on the right for an overview. Visit the site to see the lessons.


Academic Language & Sentence Frames

scigen_one-pager.pdf

Resources to Help Students Learn Signal Words

Signal words 1.pdf
Signal words 2.pdf
Signal Words Chart

Structured Talk

Students need ongoing opportunities to practice newly learned concepts. ELLs tend to be passive observers or respond in limited, brief utterances. Carefully managed strategies where students work in partners or group with prompts and sentence frames to guide their responses can provide necessary opportunities to work with new words, coach one another and deepen their understanding of new terms through repetition and by using it in multiple strands: reading, writing, talking, and listening. 

Simply telling a class to “share an idea with a partner” can result in disappointing scenarios ranging from no interaction whatsoever to students investing minimal thought and using limited language (Jiminez & Gersten, 1999; Lee & Fradd, 1996). To plan for success, talk needs to be structured. For more information on how to group students, teach routines, build in accountability and add variety, refer to this document: https://www.scoe.org/files/el14-structured-student-talk-handout.pdf


Procedural ideas for secondary content-area classrooms: http://www.ascd.org/publications/books/108035/chapters/Procedures-for-Classroom-Talk.aspx


Kagan Cooperative Learning guides teachers on how to implement a wide variety of fun structured interactions as well.  https://www.kaganonline.com/


Marzano's Six Step Process for Teaching Vocabulary 

Link to full details, graphic organizers and supports for Marzano's Six Step Process: http://www.altonschools.org/media/pdf/Marzano_Vocab.pdf