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Expanding and Refining Vocabulary in Content Areas on JSTOR

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Joan Nelson-Herber, Expanding and Refining Vocabulary in Content Areas, Journal of Reading, Vol. 29, No. 7, Special Issue on Vocabulary (Apr., 1986), pp. 626-633

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8 Strategies for Teaching Academic Vocabulary

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8 Strategies for Teaching Academic Vocabulary

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8 Strategies for Teaching Academic Language

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Ideas for developing students’ capacity to understand and use discipline-specific terminology and the language used in instruction.

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How to increase use of Academic Vocabulary

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How to increase use of Academic Vocabulary

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We wrestled with this question for a while. Then one day when I was talking with my own children the problem dawned on me: I sometimes had to watch how I spoke with my own children because they would give me funny looks when I used the "big" or unfamiliar words. My own children spoke English just fine, but they did not understand words like ubiquitous, loquacious, or facetious. The solution was looking me in the face quizzically. So, were teachers using academic language that the students whose first language was English were more familiar with? To make a long story short, we decided to increase the level of vocabulary development, primarily using many sheltered language techniques. The results were astounding. Because of this and an intense college readiness focus, in two years, our schools went from the status of unacceptable to recognized and then the next year, exemplary.

Sheltered Techniques & Marzano

Sheltered instruction is designed with the idea of helping teachers of regular subjects to accommodate for English language learners in their classroom. A close look at the strategies and the techniques of sheltered instruction will reveal that many of them are suitable for all classes.

We learned a few things in the process of increasing the vocabulary readiness of our students. Notice that I did not say that we diminished the academic language of the teachers. The focus was on helping the students to better understand and speak academic language. One of the foundations of sheltered instruction is "comprehensible input." What this means is that when the teacher is speaking to the students, the teacher should use multiple contextual clues that provide meaning along with the spoken words. A teacher would use the words verbally, but at the same time, point to the objects being described, and also show the words in written format. Gestures, pantomime, movement, actions, sounds, pictures, graphics, and video all are additional methods that teachers have at their disposal to increase the likelihood that their students will understand the message.

At about the same time we came across Robert Marzano's Building Background Knowledge for Academic Achievement which basically states that before a student can grasp the concepts being taught, the student needs a mental scaffold in which to place them. Experience, first-hand or virtual, is the number one scaffold-building tool. Reading is second best and the next best tool is intense vocabulary development prior to instruction.

As a Spanish teacher, I learned early on that the mouth is connected to the brain, and if the mouth could not say the word, then there was little chance that the brain would remember it. Learning new content in math or science is much like learning in a conversational Spanish class. If done right, the students will leave the class being fluent in the language and culture of science or they will be able to converse in the language of math. This requires that the teacher needs to initially realize that students may not understand completely what reduce, simplify, analyze, compute, illustrate, or group means.

Strategies that Work

The best way I have learned to build vocabulary is beginning with a visual/verbal/aural Bloom's Taxonomy-like scaffolding method -- starting easy then getting more complex and difficult.

Recognition of the word in context: As I point to the endoplasmic reticulum picture I say, "Is this an endoplasmic reticulum?" The students say in unison, "Yes." As I point to a picture of a ribosome I say, "Is this a vacuole?" Hopefully they respond, "No." As a total physical response (TPR) methodology, I can ask them to stand next to or point to the mitochondria, chloroplasts, etc.

Reproduction of the words in context: After going through all the words, I ask them to say the words aloud, as I point to such things as the nucleus. After I am satisfied they can say the words, then I check their understanding, "Which organelle of the cell processes energy for the nucleus?" (Mitochondria/chloroplasts). "Which parts of the cell are necessary to create proteins?" (Endoplasmic Reticulum, nucleus, Golgi apparatus, and ribosomes).

Written words in context: I then start bringing out the written-word strips and ask the students to match them with the pictures. Then, and only then will I let the students start reading the chapters, or workbooks, because, not only are they now familiar with the concepts, but they have muscle memory of the words in their mouths and know how to say them and thus remember them. This method is more enjoyable and more effective for students than writing the words ten times each in sentences, an all too-typical vocabulary development technique.

To increase student-learning success and decrease the achievement gap, what other vocabulary development techniques and strategies do you use to help students develop the necessary background knowledge?

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Developing Students' Academic Vocabulary Helps Beat Achievement Gap | Edutopia

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We wrestled with this question for a while. Then one day when I was talking with my own children the problem dawned on me: I sometimes had to watch how I spoke with my own children because they would give me funny looks when I used the "big" or unfamiliar words.

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We wrestled with this question for a while. Then one day when I was talking with my own children the problem dawned on me: I sometimes had to watch how I spoke with my own children because they would give me funny looks when I used the "big" or unfamiliar words. My own children spoke English just fine, but they did not understand words like ubiquitous, loquacious, or facetious. The solution was looking me in the face quizzically. So, were teachers using academic language that the students whose first language was English were more familiar with? To make a long story short, we decided to increase the level of vocabulary development, primarily using many sheltered language techniques. The results were astounding. Because of this and an intense college readiness focus, in two years, our schools went from the status of unacceptable to recognized and then the next year, exemplary.

Sheltered Techniques & Marzano

Sheltered instruction is designed with the idea of helping teachers of regular subjects to accommodate for English language learners in their classroom. A close look at the strategies and the techniques of sheltered instruction will reveal that many of them are suitable for all classes.

We learned a few things in the process of increasing the vocabulary readiness of our students. Notice that I did not say that we diminished the academic language of the teachers. The focus was on helping the students to better understand and speak academic language. One of the foundations of sheltered instruction is "comprehensible input." What this means is that when the teacher is speaking to the students, the teacher should use multiple contextual clues that provide meaning along with the spoken words. A teacher would use the words verbally, but at the same time, point to the objects being described, and also show the words in written format. Gestures, pantomime, movement, actions, sounds, pictures, graphics, and video all are additional methods that teachers have at their disposal to increase the likelihood that their students will understand the message.

At about the same time we came across Robert Marzano's Building Background Knowledge for Academic Achievement which basically states that before a student can grasp the concepts being taught, the student needs a mental scaffold in which to place them. Experience, first-hand or virtual, is the number one scaffold-building tool. Reading is second best and the next best tool is intense vocabulary development prior to instruction.

As a Spanish teacher, I learned early on that the mouth is connected to the brain, and if the mouth could not say the word, then there was little chance that the brain would remember it. Learning new content in math or science is much like learning in a conversational Spanish class. If done right, the students will leave the class being fluent in the language and culture of science or they will be able to converse in the language of math. This requires that the teacher needs to initially realize that students may not understand completely what reduce, simplify, analyze, compute, illustrate, or group means.

Strategies that Work

The best way I have learned to build vocabulary is beginning with a visual/verbal/aural Bloom's Taxonomy-like scaffolding method -- starting easy then getting more complex and difficult.

Recognition of the word in context: As I point to the endoplasmic reticulum picture I say, "Is this an endoplasmic reticulum?" The students say in unison, "Yes." As I point to a picture of a ribosome I say, "Is this a vacuole?" Hopefully they respond, "No." As a total physical response (TPR) methodology, I can ask them to stand next to or point to the mitochondria, chloroplasts, etc.

Reproduction of the words in context: After going through all the words, I ask them to say the words aloud, as I point to such things as the nucleus. After I am satisfied they can say the words, then I check their understanding, "Which organelle of the cell processes energy for the nucleus?" (Mitochondria/chloroplasts). "Which parts of the cell are necessary to create proteins?" (Endoplasmic Reticulum, nucleus, Golgi apparatus, and ribosomes).

Written words in context: I then start bringing out the written-word strips and ask the students to match them with the pictures. Then, and only then will I let the students start reading the chapters, or workbooks, because, not only are they now familiar with the concepts, but they have muscle memory of the words in their mouths and know how to say them and thus remember them. This method is more enjoyable and more effective for students than writing the words ten times each in sentences, an all too-typical vocabulary development technique.

To increase student-learning success and decrease the achievement gap, what other vocabulary development techniques and strategies do you use to help students develop the necessary background knowledge?

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Developing Students' Academic Vocabulary Helps Beat Achievement Gap | Edutopia

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We wrestled with this question for a while. Then one day when I was talking with my own children the problem dawned on me: I sometimes had to watch how I spoke with my own children because they would give me funny looks when I used the "big" or unfamiliar words.

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How to Improve use of Academic Vocabulary

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How to Improve use of Academic Vocabulary

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Why Use Academic Vocabulary? Align with CCSS

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Why Use Academic Vocabulary? Align with CCSS

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PreK-5 Common Core Academic Vocabulary - Learning A-Z

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Common Core Vocabulary words are broken down into three tiers to make learning easier for kids. Learning A-Z products are designed to teach students the vocabulary required by Common Core State Standards and other state-specific standards.

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Berkeley Schools Guide to Academic Vocabulary

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Berkeley Schools Guide to Academic Vocabulary

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http://d97cooltools.blogspot.com/2012/09/commoncoreunpackingacademicvocabulary.html

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Are you wondering where to begin to adopt the Common Core Vocabulary Standards? While there are many specific vocabulary standards clearly listed in the K-12 Language strand, it's helpful and important to look at Academic Vocabulary from the big picture view known as Shift 6. Let's unpack it.

Shift 6: Academic Vocabulary

Three Tiers of Vocabulary

Understanding: Watch a Video by

Tier 1:
Words acquired through every day speech, usually learned in the early grades

Tier 2:
Academic words that appear across all types of text. These are often precise words that are used by the author in place of common words. (i.e. gallop instead of run). They change meaning with use.

Tier 3:
Domain specific words" that are specifically tied to content. (i.e. Constitution, lava) These are typically the types of vocabulary words that are included in glossaries, highlighted in textbooks and address by teachers. They are considered difficult words important to understanding content.

The Common Core suggests that it's important to target specific instruction on Tier 2 and and Tier 3 vocabulary words to help students develop deep understanding that cannot be acquired through independent reading. Since Tier 3 words are typically targeted in content specific instruction, it's particularly important and challenging to identify and target Tier 2 words, since they appear across all disciplines. The task at hand, then, appears to be identifying the Tier 2 words and finding effective instructional strategies to support acquisition of those words.
EngageNY

It's clear that identifying the Tier 2 Vocabulary words in a passage can be both challenging and time-consuming for teachers. While it is important for the teacher to be the decision-makers about identifying Tier 2 Vocabulary, and it's understood that a digital tool is no substitute for human decision-making, it's helpful to have a tool to jump start the process and provide a starting point. Wordle, a simple word cloud generator can be a handy tool for this task.

Digital Tools to Help Identify Tier 2 Words

Included in the collection of Common Core resources from . I decided to pop the of text of The Gettysburg Address into EngageNY is a high school level exemplor lesson that devotes three days of instruction to carefully examining and interacting with the first three paragraphs of Lincoln's . The focus of vocabulary instruction in this lesson centers around one important word, dedicated dedicated Wordle to see if the tool would identify this important Tier 2 word and the results were consistent with the findings of EngageNY. The word jumped off the page along with some other significant words.

Taking this one step further, I returned to the original text and used the Find Tool (control + f) to find occurances of the word, dedicated. This was helpful for jump starting the process of examining the important word and how it is used in context.

I performed similar experiments on other significant documents, including Martin Luther King's I Have a Dream speech. The tool does appear to be helpful as a starting point for identifying significant words, but again, it is no substitute for human decision-making.

If you are looking for digital tools to help students build deep meaning of vocabulary words, there are quite a few that are well-suited for the task. I have created a MentorMob playlist of tools to guide the journey and exploration through some previous blog posts with more information about the tools.

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Common Core Connections: Unpacking Academic Vocabulary

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Are you wondering where to begin to adopt the Common Core Vocabulary Standards? While there are many specific vocabulary standards clearly listed in the K-12 Language strand, it's helpful and important to look at Academic Vocabulary from the big picture view known as Shift 6. Let's unpack it.