25. MOREcabulary

Episode Transcript:

0:00

Well Mike thank you so much for being here today.

You're welcome!

I'm excited to talk with you and it's crazy that we go back about 20 years.

I know.

And we still look so young.

Yes, exactly.

It's wonderful.

0:15

It's wonderful.

Well, and the presentation, I'll never forget, it was very meaningful to me, the one you gave at the opening ceremony, so to speak, when we were in NT and you guys talking about teachers taking care of themselves, it really, it really resonated.

0:33

Well, and when we were doing that, my colleague Jen, she was trying not to cry.

And then when she gets emotional, like I can't, I'm Southern.

Like if if you're going to cry, you got a companion with me, I would totally participate.

All that emotional.

But I mean, that's good.

0:48

I mean, I I think it speaks to the kindness and caring people that we work with.

And the thing I remember about that particular session is showing that video about the happiness advantage.

It's such a great it's such a great video.

Sean, what's his last name?

1:06

I'm blanking on the last name right now.

I'll it'll come to me as soon as we're done.

But that video about the happiness advantage is just spectacular information for people and what they need to do to be happy and not chase it.

You know it it's already there.

1:21

Just got to find it so.

Absolutely, Absolutely.

So I love that because you write those hacking books, They're part of the Hacking Learning series.

And why?

Why did you get involved in that?

What was your purpose behind writing those books?

1:39

Well, initially it was to help out my buddy Mark Barnes, who was starting a publishing company.

We had both written for ACD in the past and we had been to conferences together and presented and been on panels.

And I've known him for a long time and when he started the publishing stuff, I said, well, you know, there's not a whole lot out there about the Common Core at the time.

2:02

And I said maybe we should do something with that because I'm doing a lot of work with that locally and you know, around the country and it's it's what's on tap at the moment.

And so that's what I did.

And he it was a very prescriptive writing situation.

2:19

It's not, I haven't done anything like that before, except for the two hacking books where you've got like a prescriptive technique.

Like you want you to identify the problem, what you can do about it, what are some simple things to to do in the classroom.

What does it look like in practice.

And so you do that for every single chapter.

2:35

And I don't normally write in sequential, I guess logical ways, ideas come out.

I develop the idea and then I sequence in and then I, you know, edit it and revise it based on like whatever else is going on to, you know, to work on the flow of things.

2:51

That's not how this book works.

So each chapter was its own sort of encapsulated story and then together they make up the the hacks that go into the whole book, so.

So then, did he organized the sequence of them?

3:08

Did he give you the topics?

Or I think that initially I organized the sequence because there were there's ten in the book and I think I wrote probably another five and then I had another list of like 60.

Of course I knew it wasn't going to fly, but that some of those actually ended up being in the later book about hacking instructional design, which ended up being way more successful than the Common Core book because it was time limit.

3:35

So it was really only valuable to people for a couple of years.

We still occasionally sell one, but the stuff that's in it, a lot of that transferred into hacking instructional design, so the the ideas continue, maybe in a little bit different way with a different title.

3:52

Interesting.

Interesting.

So the one chapter you wrote was on vocabulary instruction, and that's what I was hoping we would talk about today.

But before, before we jump into that, I have material from the US Department of Education and they have eight recommendations for English Language learners.

4:11

And I'm just curious, I'm going to read you the list of there's five topics.

Which one do you think is the most important would make the biggest difference just based on what you've seen in your role as a curriculum designer and supporter for ELA materials?

4:29

So number one is to screen for reading problems, #2 is small group reading interventions, 3 is extensive and varied vocabulary instruction, 4 is developing academic English and five is peer assisted learning.

4:50

So, peer tutoring, what do you think?

I would say the extensive vocabulary instruction would be #1 on my list, and then the peer tutoring would be second because the social construction of language is more important than the dictionary reconstruction of language.

5:08

And and I I do read a lot and I, I can't necessarily quote it off the top of my head, but a lot of the researchers talk about, you know, voluminous amounts of reading and being exposed to lots of different words at an early age.

5:26

And you'll, you'll, you'll hear teachers say, you know, I don't know, you might experience this but when I work with teachers, you know, sometimes they'll tell me those words are too big for our kids or that's not developmentally appropriate yet.

And I think that's all just malarkey because.

5:41

And I, I, I'll, I'll share the link with you after we're done.

But we did a video.

We were just watching it the other night, just old videos of the kids.

And our daughter, when she was three years old, was going through all of the dinosaurs that she knows and like Protoxorina and Triceratops and Tyrannosaurus Rex and Brachiosaurus.

6:04

And like she couldn't spell those words if her life depended on at three years old.

But she knew all those words.

I also recorded her discovering the word nonconformity.

It was from Rudolph the Red Nosed reindeer because of the reindeer and the elf.

6:21

And I recorded these moments just as an example of, you know, oral language is really important and having conversations is really important and it's it's the basis of whatever the written language is going to turn into.

But if they don't have those words in their head, then they're not going to be able to use them with their hands.

6:41

Absolutely.

That makes a lot of sense.

I know inside the material itself, they talk about multiple exposures across several days with a variety of reading, writing and speaking.

But the big emphasis, they say is on those student friendly definitions, which is, yeah, being able to take it and make meaning from it.

7:03

And I love, I love their statement.

The goal of rich vocabulary instruction is for students to develop an understanding of word meanings to the point where they can use these and related words in their communication and as a basis for future learning and.

I don't know if I wrote it in the Common Core book or if I wrote it in a later book, but I have written about social construction so that it's not about looking up words in the dictionary.

7:27

It's about using the room and the experience of the kids that are in front of you to see if they have any understanding of a particular new word.

Actually, I believe that I did mention this in the Common Core book because I talked about an example with the word emphatic.

And if kids know the word emphasis, then getting to the word emphatic is not a big leap.

7:48

No.

And and but you know it would be a big leap if all they did was look it up in the dictionary and write the word five times.

That's not contextual.

It's not relevant.

It has no meaning.

There's no mental Velcro for the kids whatsoever.

So they lose it.

So and I think a lot of what you just read the the the five things you read are covered in other people's books as well as but in particular Bob Marzano, Mr., Darlington even like current like bloggers and publishers, Shanahan, Tim Shanahan, they all, they all write about these multi point processes for acquiring new words and they're not really related to E&L.

8:32

It's just that it's good for all kids, but in particular for E&L kids.

Yes, and they they say in here that a lot of the vocabulary instruction that occurs isn't as thorough or as it explicit as what is recommended.

8:49

Right and.

That what you see in the classroom isn't as thorough and as explicit as what's recommended.

Right.

And a lot of, a lot of vocabulary acquisition and even like spelling.

I don't, I don't think that it's a bad practice.

I think that people should spell.

Well, I do not, but I have an editor and you know, I use spell check and Grammarly and all those tools online.

9:12

And I mean, other kids will too.

But when you just concentrate on the spelling, or you just concentrate on like writing the word several times or looking up words in the dictionary, all of that work is.

I don't.

9:28

I don't know if moot is the word, but the research says that out of if you do 100 words that way, the kids only hold on to three of them.

It just seems like such a waste of time.

I hear you.

I really do.

So it's it's more important that they make meaning from using the words.

9:46

And I think that's been my emphasis this year just in my professional life has been to really think about the vocabulary and reusing the vocabulary across multiple days that that comes up and maybe even like the big umbrella concept, one that keeps coming up it.

10:04

I'm sure you'll see a cycle or pattern.

You know that that concept and we see it, you know, with the months, the year and the seasons and.

All this, well, we look for things like that, cause and effect, all those cost cutting concepts and actually they're laid out pretty explicitly in the new science standards, but they apply to all the different subject areas.

10:27

For sure.

Things that would have leverage across multiple content areas and multiple types of learning.

Absolutely.

So as teachers, when you are deciding what you're going to focus on, or what vocabulary, what words, how, how, how should we go about thinking about that before we start instructing?

10:50

Well, I think there's some before and during things that should go on.

The before part is for the teacher with their knowledge of students to think about what the words are that might throw the kids for a loop or not be able to make meaning or not be able to get to like a a 95% accuracy whenever they read and just anticipate what's going on.

11:13

But that doesn't mean the students should also be contributors to that.

That's the teacher facing version.

The teacher should pull out, you know, five or six, you know words that that maybe they should talk about at the beginning and front load and then from there once they start reading, the kids should be able to add to that list.

11:35

Absolutely, I find that.

Even if it's a small word or something that they, you would think that they would know.

If they don't know it, I'd rather know that they don't know it so that we can talk about it, then just gloss over it, and then they're not reading at an accuracy level that's going to allow them to comprehend what they're losing.

11:52

Yes, for sure.

And I like to just sprinkle in that little bit of vocabulary as we're going through.

And so did we finish.

You were talking about what what to do ahead of time and what to do.

During front loading, front loading some of the words, not a lot like.

12:11

I certainly wouldn't come up with like a list of 20 things .  With going to do effective instruction, fewer is better than more, and the more words there are, the more opportunities there are for anxiety.

And when we're out, like even like in just this day and age like that consideration alone is a social emotional learning decision to make.

12:33

And if the kids are anxious, then you know the cortisol in their blood is is building up and it's actually building a wall.

And you start building that wall when they're young and they get the 6th or 7th grade, they've got all these bricks in the wall and it's harder to tear that down because it eventually becomes not worth it to climb over the wall.

12:52

And So what looks like apathy has really been designed to to keep them from success and reading.

Interesting.

And I from a English language learning point of view, we call that the affective filter.

And yeah, yeah, so we're worrying about the, you know, the affective filter.

13:13

I used to do affective surveys with effective not affective, but they were effective with my students because a part of this too with language acquisition is them trusting you and you trusting them and building that relationship.

And I know we talk about relationships in in education a lot, but when kids trust their teacher, a lot more happens than than would otherwise.

13:38

Yes, absolutely, absolutely.

And I I have found for me, being in small groups allows the kids to ask questions of words that they might feel "stupid" for asking in front of a whole group.

13:55

But if it's a smaller group and a lot of times the other kids will just tell them, you know what, what it means or what's going on.

But just to have that level of comfort in a smaller setting I find is very effective as well it.

14:13

You know, I there's a lot of like learning that goes into learning how to become a teacher.

But I do remember a particular instance whenever I was out in my first placement in a school and I had never heard the word manipulatives used in like an educational context.

14:32

Like I knew what manipulate meant, but I didn't know that it was something the kids would use hands on and like, like math.

Manipulatives, yeah.

Yeah, like stuff.

And so I asked what that meant and I was raped across the coast for it in front of a bunch of people about how could you not know what that is?

14:52

Like, that's a basic things like we're using these things in classrooms all the time.

They're called manipulatives.

How do you not know that?

And what it did was it kept me from asking any more questions for a long time.

Yeah.

And and how does that benefit anyone?

Right.

I mean, I would go and find out things on my own because I was, you know, I was working on my educational certificate, but it for a while it it it shut me down.

15:20

It's too bad.

I'm sorry to hear that.

It's a long time ago.

Sure, you're fully recovered by now, right?

Well, I mean, I even, I wouldn't even thought about it if we weren't talking about words.

But one of the things that I write about is telling stories with words.

15:36

And so it's just it's a story to tell now.

Yes.

When I love how you brought in related words that's a lot of times I I just to get people thinking about other words they know that have the same root or the same basis.

15:51

It just, you know, kind of expand your vocabulary very quickly When you start to realize that you can recognize those patterns across words and.

That's what's in the standards like that's you know that that's a responsibility that that teachers have in relation to.

16:09

And I'm this is off the top of my head, but reading standard for language, standard for that.

The ones that talk about the acquisition of knowledge.

There's some stuff in there about etymology and understanding where words came from and suffixes and prefixes.

But that's where you get a lot of bang for your buck when you're talking about that and how it relates to the three previous standards.

16:30

Particularly when reading, where kids are having to understand key ideas and details, look for inferences, look for evidence in text.

The those close reading standards which it ever says close reading, it says read closely would be the very important difference.

16:47

But there's there's a lot of opportunities to teach around the word so that you can understand like whole word families.

And once the kid learns the one word, they actually know a whole lot of other words to go with it.

Absolutely, Absolutely.

17:06

I know.

And it's funny because when you're in the primary grades and you say word families, they mean like, rhyming words, like bad, sad, mad, glad that's it's so it's so that different lens of word families being related words.

Yeah, yeah, it was funny, 'cause I started my career, my first ten years were all secondary level.

17:27

And so when I got into the elementary and was exposed to a different idea of word families, it was very interesting to think about.

So you know and that's an example of a multi meaning word that can be interpreted different ways based on your context.

17:47

So.

So when we're talking about vocabulary, when we're incorporating vocabulary, do you have a suggestion for making it more obvious or attractive, Easy or satisfying?

18:02

These are the atomic habit suggestions so.

Yeah, And I I will be honest and say I haven't read the Atomic Habits book, but I did read a book called Switch by Dan and Chippy.

OK, similar things.

And I did read a summary of Atomic Habits before our call here.

18:22

But one of the things that Atomic Habits says, and that also occurs in the Dan and Chip Keith book, is to make it easy.

And if if you make it easy, then you know we're going back to that idea of lowering anxiety for kids, decreasing that cortisol growth in their bloodstream and maybe even releasing a little serotonin.

18:44

And I think it is by not having maybe explicit vocabulary time.

It's just part of what we do.

It's just the culture of reading and working with words.

And when we come to vocabulary, we have these good habits where we're pronouncing the words.

19:00

We're engaging in different ways with the words, especially with non linguistic representations, something that is multimedia and multimodal and that that those multiple modalities are particularly important for E&L kids and then assessment.

But the assessment not, you know, to test the kids on Friday because we've learned new vocabulary words, but to constantly hold them accountable in reading, writing and discussing what these words are and making sure they're secure with them before we can move on to whatever the next thing is.

19:28

Yeah, like using them as part of a word bank, saying you got to respond about what you learned in science this week and you need to use, you know, at least three of these words from a word box or something like.

That what's going to come up on higher level assessments when they get older, They're going to be asked to use their vocabulary words and to be honest, those kids that score higher on those tests.

19:52

This is just a quick test taking tip that's not related to the content.

But if you use bigger words, there are humans assessing these written tests, and they'll assume that you're smarter, or they'll assume that you have a better vocabulary than maybe you have because you've used these big words.

20:09

Well, and I'll tell you, I've also heard that at the professional teacher level, when trying to justify something to a supervisor, oh, there's not enough big words in that we need to add a couple more in.

Well, even if you're having a conversation with your supervisor, somebody that is like observing you, if you use bigger words that they don't know, they usually go along with you rather than admit that they don't know those words.

20:35

I love it.

I love it.

All right, So as we end today, and honestly, you've actually modeled this throughout the entire time because you know, having joy, having serotonin happiness is all important.

What's one thing you do to bring more joy into your own life?

20:53

Well, I don't think the other people are going to like it, but I I write all the time and when I'm down, I write.

When I'm up, I write.

That's just it's something that I know makes me happy and that I am in complete control of and.

21:09

That's why you write.

Books.

And then I also like being at the beach.

Beach rejuvenates me, Water in general.

So I want my kids to be, you know, very successful so they can buy us a house at the beach when they're older.

21:25

All tire, so they need to get working on it.

Nice, nice.

All right.

Well, thank you so much for your time today, Mike.

You know, it's just so good to hear the little tidbits thrown in of ideas.

21:43

And I like how we're doing, having this discussion where we're, you know, lowering the affective filter, we're we're lowering our cortisol and thinking about it just, you know, it doesn't have to be one more thing.

It's just it's something you think about as you're going throughout the lesson and being open to incorporating vocabulary as you come across it.

22:05

Yeah, it's an ecosystem thing, and you can't have effective reading and writing without effective vocabulary construction.

It has to be explicit, it has to be relevant, it has to be contextual, it has to be off on it.

And if that doesn't happen and you remove that from its niche in the ecosystem, then you disrupt the whole ecosystem.

22:25

Yeah, I think that's the end of my metaphors for the day, but it's it's true.

That's what happens.

And you, you have to understand sort of the ebb and flow of all of that that's happening in the ecosystem and how it comes together to create really success for kids.

Mic drop?

22:47

Absolutely, absolutely.

So thank you again for your expertise.

All right.

You're welcome anytime.