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Description

The 10th installment of MCPER's "10 Key" series, this document distills the latest research findings into 10 easy-to-follow recommendations that states, school districts, and schools can use to improve instruction in vocabulary. Also included is a list of research evidence supporting the recommendations.

Note: This file has been formatted for online viewing and is not a print file.

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10 Key Vocabulary Practices for All Schools - The Meadows Center

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Description The 10th installment of MCPER's "10 Key" series, this document distills the latest research findings into 10 easy-to-follow recommendations that states, school districts, and schools can use to improve instruction in vocabulary. Also included is a list of research evidence supporting the recommendations.

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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English | LDOCE

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Longman English Dictionary - the leading dictionary for learners of English of all levels: definitions, idioms, examples and more.

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Search Dictionary for Word Games Crosswords and Anagrams - More Words

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More Words uses a word list designed for word games. So names of people and places, phrases, and words with hyphens or apostrophes are not included.

More Words can be used to find words for crosswords, codewords, Scrabble®, Upwords, Words with Friends and other word games and puzzles. See Help and Frequently Asked Questions.

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Search Dictionary for Word Games Crosswords and Anagrams - More Words

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More Words uses a word list designed for word games. So names of people and places, phrases, and words with hyphens or apostrophes are not included. More Words can be used to find words for crosswords, codewords, Scrabble®, Upwords, Words with Friends and other word games and puzzles.

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ReadWorks | Award-Winning, EdTech Nonprofit Organization

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ReadWorks is an edtech nonprofit organization that is committed to helping to solve America’s reading comprehension crisis.

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These grade-specific, daily phonemic awareness lessons are designed to supplement existing foundational skills instruction, providing e...

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Etymonline - Online Etymology Dictionary

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The online etymology dictionary (etymonline) is the internet’s go-to source for quick and reliable accounts of the origin and history of English words, phrases, and idioms. It is professional enough to satisfy academic standards, but accessible enough to be used by anyone.

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A Matter of Talk: Nonie Lesaux's '8 for 8'

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Achievethecore.org :: Instructional Practice Guide: Academic Word Finder

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This guide is a practical tool that teachers, and teacher-trainers, can use (and re-use!) in order to build fluency with the Common Core State Standards (CCSS).

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I teach, I write, I travel, I talk—to help students become better readers and writers.

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Hundreds of thousands of teachers have used this highly practical guide to help K-12 students enlarge their vocabulary and get involved in noticing, understanding, and using new words. Grounded in research, the book explains how to select words for instruction, introduce their meanings, and create engaging learning activities that promote both word knowledge and reading comprehension. The authors are trusted experts who draw on extensive experience in diverse classrooms and schools. Sample lessons and vignettes, children's literature suggestions, "Your Turn" learning activities, and a Study Guide for teachers enhance the book's utility as a classroom resource, professional development tool, or course text. The Study Guide can also be downloaded and printed for ease of use ( www.guilford.com/beck-studyguide).

New to This Edition

Reflects over a decade of advances in research-based vocabulary instruction.

Chapters on vocabulary and writing; assessment; and differentiating instruction for struggling readers and English language learners, including coverage of response to intervention (RTI).

Expanded discussions of content-area vocabulary and multiple-meaning words.

Many additional examples showing what robust instruction looks like in action.

Appendix with a useful menu of instructional activities.

See also the authors' Creating Robust Vocabulary: Frequently Asked Questions and Extended Examples, which includes specific instructional sequences for different grade ranges, as well as Making Sense of Phonics, Second Edition: The Hows and Whys, by Isabel L. Beck and Mark E. Beck, an invaluable resource for K-3.

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Bringing Words to Life: Second Edition: Robust Vocabulary Instruction

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Hundreds of thousands of teachers have used this highly practical guide to help K-12 students enlarge their vocabulary and get involved in noticing, understanding, and using new words. Grounded in research, the book explains how to select words for instruction, introduce their meanings, and create engaging learning activities that promote both word knowledge and reading comprehension.

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Effective and Efficient Teaching

By Anita L. Archer and Charles A. Hughes

Explicit instruction is systematic, direct, engaging, and success oriented-and has been shown to promote achievement for all students. This highly practical and accessible resource gives special and general education teachers the tools to implement explicit instruction in any grade level or content area. The authors are leading experts who provide clear guidelines for identifying key concepts, strategies, skills, and routines to teach; designing and delivering effective lessons; and giving students opportunities to practice and master new material. Sample lesson plans, lively examples, and reproducible checklists and teacher worksheets enhance the utility of the volume.

This title is part of the What Works for Special-Needs Learners Series, edited by Karen R. Harris and Steve Graham.

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Explicit Instructions | Effective and Efficient Teaching

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By Anita L. Archer and Charles A. Hughes Explicit instruction is systematic, direct, engaging, and success oriented-and has been shown to promote achievement for all students. This highly practical and accessible resource gives special and general education teachers the tools to implement explicit instruction in any grade level or content area.

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Find out how strong your vocabulary is and learn new words at Vocabulary.com.

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Vocabulary.com helps you learn new words, play games that improve your vocabulary, and explore language.

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This article originally appeared on the Mr. G Mpls Blog. It has been reproduced here with permission from the author.
The " knowledge-gap" is pinpointed most recently by Natalie Wexler as a culprit for continued stagnant reading proficiency levels and growing disparities in student outcomes in the U.S. Thankfully, more and more are realizing that students' ability to think critically and creatively is severely hampered without a solid foundation of background knowledge.

Yet beyond adopting a "knowledge-rich" curricula and understanding the importance of building a deep structure of knowledge, I've recently caught myself struggling to think of how, specifically, knowledge-building happens within lessons. As in, I was unsure exactly how a knowledge-rich curriculum was brought to life and best imparted to students on a day-to-day basis.

While I prioritize class time around a cohesive curricula with reading, writing, and discussion and have found tremendous benefits from using knowledge organizers, I was still left feeling my approach to "knowledge-building" was missing...something. That something, I learned recently, was robust vocabulary instruction.

Why Is Vocabulary Important?

As a profession, we've come to associate a variety of stale and ineffective practices with vocabulary instruction. I used to practice the following "vocabulary activities," deliriously hoping I was building students' vocabulary.

Repetitively teaching vocabulary with the same definition (this is actually rote learning)

Using matching exercises and one-dimensional puzzles

Having students copy opaque, poorly-written definitions from dictionaries or glossaries

Challenging students to vaguely "write a new sentence using this word."

What I and many others have passed off as vocabulary instruction is completely inadequate and fails to allow students the opportunity to take advantage of the power of a deep and interconnected vocabulary. Shanahan (2005) writes in The National Reading Panel Report: Practical Advice for Teachers.

"The importance of vocabulary is beyond doubt...such knowledge is integral to any activities that involve language, and psychologists have shown how vocabulary is more than a list of 'word meanings in the mind,' but actually functions as an index of a much richer and harder to measure constellation of understandings and experiences."

This interconnected web of vocabulary we each carry around has been found to be a vital foundation for reading comprehension. In Bringing Words to Life: Robust Vocabulary Instruction, Beck, McKeown, and Kucan (2013) highlight the close relationship between vocabulary and reading comprehension.

"There is much evidence - strong correlations, several causal studies, as well as rich theoretical orientations - that shows that vocabulary is tightly related to reading comprehension across the age span."

And so, while the empirical support for vocabulary instruction is present, what are teachers to do with more than a quarter million words in most dictionaries? How can teachers best approach the daunting, yet crucial challenge of vocabulary instruction? To start, the answer is certainly not to rely on independent reading to do the job.

Beck, McKeown, and Kucan (2013) point out that while "wide reading" is indeed an important source of vocabulary development for students, it should not be seen as a replacement for robust instruction.

"Written context is clearly an important source of new vocabulary for any reader. But relying on learning word meanings from independent reading is not an adequate way to deal with students' vocabulary development."

Furthermore, the Matthew Effect must be considered. Shanahan (2005) points out "studies suggest lower achieving readers acquire less incidental vocabulary than good readers acquire." In other words, it is teachers' great responsibility to provide all students with access to the vocabulary required to experience success in school. First though, we have to figure out what vocabulary to teach.

Three Tier Framework

The Three Tier framework, articulated by Beck, McKeown, and Kucan (2013), is a powerful tool to help teachers categorize and identify high-value vocabulary that can improve students' verbal functioning and reading comprehension. Essentially, words are categorized into three buckets:

Tier One: "Words typically found in oral language." These words are typically found in high frequency word lists, and do not require much focus as students hear these on a regular basis in conversation.

Tier Three: "Words that tend to be limited to specific domains." These are the words textbooks typically put in bold. While important, these words have limited use outside the specific content area, and are not very helpful for enriching descriptions or explanations.

Tier Two: "Words that are more characteristic of written language, and not so common in conversation." These are words that students will not hear, but will encounter across various domains as they read and write in school. These words are to be prioritized for instruction.

It's estimated that to read with minimal disturbance in comprehension, readers need a vocabulary of around 15,000 words. Of those 15,000 words, Beck, McKeown, and Kucan (2013) conclude that 8,000 are Tier One which require minimal focus, and 7,000 are Tier Two and should be the focus of robust vocabulary instruction. That breaks down to between 300-400 Tier Two words per year to be deliberately taught alongside the context/content they authentically arise.

Tier Two words are so important because they fundamentally expand students' verbal functioning by building rich representations of words that can be used in a variety of contexts. These Tier Two words empower students to provide more specific, mature ways of describing and explaining the world. While an exact science does not exist to pinpoint Tier Two vocabulary, Beck, McKeown, and Kucan (2013) do provide some helpful questions to ponder when identifying Tier 2 words.

1. Generally, how useful is the word; will students see it in multiple contexts; will it help students better describe their experiences?

2. How does the word contribute to the overall text being read; does it communicate vital meaning or tone?

3. How does the word relate to other words and previously-learned content?

Having identified a rough process identifying Tier Two vocabulary, what are best practices for introducing, teaching, and assessing this vocabulary?

Best Practices for Teaching Vocabulary

When designing vocabulary instruction, it is important to keep in mind two words: frequency and robustness. Beck, McKeown, and Kucan (2013) write about the importance of providing "frequent and varied encounters with target words and robust instructional activities that engage students in deep processing."

To accomplish frequent and robust encounters with vocabulary, the instructional sequence for words is spread across at least three days, but ideally five or more days. In this sequence, a variety of deliberately-designed exercises are done with students to use the words to describe new contexts, explore the multidimensional nature of words, and consider relationships among words (seriously, buy the book, it is loaded with exercises to use!). Here is an outline of the instructional sequence recommended in Bringing Words to Life:

Day 1: Introduce words to students with student-friendly explanations and context

Days 2-4: Follow-up activities
Identify examples/non-examples; form word associations with new contexts, additional writing exercises (The Writing Revolution makes for a great supplement here).

Day 5: Assessment

When introducing new vocabulary, Beck, McKeown, and Kucan (2013) highlight the importance of providing student-friendly explanations, the original context the word came from, and opportunities for students to interact with word meanings. "A robust approach to vocabulary involves directly explaining the meanings of words along with thought-provoking, playful, and interactive follow-up."

Therefore, to get started, I first scanned each lesson's text for Tier Two vocabulary, and then created a table with the target word, instructional context, and a student-friendly definition modified from learner's dictionaries. (Optional: I also created a "student dictionary" with the explanation cells left blank for students to fill in as a lesson starter).

Then, I created a variety of exercises (example/non-example and writing sentence stems) to be completed with students to start lessons after the new words have been introduced.

Ideally students are working with each word 3-4 days in a row, and further challenge should be gradually added by having students generate new situations to match target words (e.g. How would a critical person write about a music show?). Here's an example of encouraging students to interact with vocabulary meaning in new contexts.

The key is to make sure students are having plenty of opportunities to explain why they made the yes/no choice they did, and then to discuss it whole-class. While students complete this table, they have their "student dictionary" available to refer to.

Finally, at the end of units, I created true/false assessments with explanations to measure more surface level knowledge (e.g. does a critical person think carefully before making decisions?) and deeper knowledge (e.g. how can the history of Columbus be analyzed critically?). In this way, the full instructional sequence of Tier Two word instruction is designed to simultaneously improve students' verbal functioning and activate background knowledge.

Summary

Robust vocabulary instruction is a crucial driver of knowledge-building. While many knowledge-rich curricula might emphasize the importance of vocabulary and identify key vocabulary words in each lesson (typically Tier Three), ultimately the quality and robustness of vocabulary instruction comes down to teacher expertise and judgement.

Shanahan (2005) summarizes it best: "the most effective direct instruction in vocabulary helps children gain deep understanding of word meanings (much more than simple dictionary definitions); requires plenty of reading, writing, talking, and listening; emphasizes the interconnections among words and word meanings and the connections of words to children's own experiences; and provides abundant ongoing review and repetition."

We do a disservice to students when we devalue vocabulary instruction to a level of copying definitions and matching exercises. Knowledge-building is made more robust with vocabulary instruction.

I'm on Twitter.

References

Beck, I. L., McKeown, M. G., & Kucan, L. (2013). Bringing words to life: Robust vocabulary instruction. Guilford Press.

Shanahan, T. (2005). The National Reading Panel Report. Practical Advice for Teachers. Learning Point Associates/North Central Regional Educational Laboratory (NCREL).

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Robust Vocabulary Instruction - Peers and Pedagogy

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This article originally appeared on the Mr. G Mpls Blog. It has been reproduced here with permission from the author. The "knowledge-gap" is pinpointed most recently by Natalie Wexler as a culprit for continued stagnant reading proficiency levels and growing disparities in student outcomes in the U.S.

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Grade Level: Sixth Grade - Middle School

School: Fees Middle School

Location: Tempe, Arizona

Videographer: Dima Yaremenko

Elapsed Time: 09:36

Introduction: Dr. Archer is preparing students to read a biography of Harriet Tubman including the following activities: a) teaching background knowledge, b) introducing the pronunciation of multi-syllabic words, and c) teaching critical vocabulary words. In this video segment, Dr. Archer is introducing two vocabulary terms: elude and intention.

To see the entire passage reading preparation, see the following videos:

Pronunciation of Multi-syllabic Words - Sixth Grade Language Arts

Background Knowledge Instruction - Sixth Grade Language Arts

Focus: As you watch this video, think about the following questions:

1) What steps were used in the vocabulary instructional routine to introduce each of the vocabulary terms?

2) What other procedures were used to extend vocabulary instruction?

3) What delivery skills were used?
Feedback: What steps were used in the vocabulary instructional routine to introduce each of the vocabulary terms?
The instructional routine included the following steps:

1) Introduce the pronunciation of the word.
In order to attachment meaning to the vocabulary term and to retrieve that meaning, students must pronounce the word correctly. If the word is one that students have neither heard or said OR is difficult to pronounce, have the students pronounce the word a number of times.

2) Provide a student-friendly explanation of the word's meaning. The next step is to present the meaning of the word using a definition/explanation that is easy to understand and only includes known words. In this case, the definition was presented in a written form within the power-point. Presentation of the definition within a sentence makes it easier to process the definition.

3) Illustrate with examples.
Dr. Archer presented a number of examples to illustrate the vocabulary term/concept. Some of the examples related to the students' own experiences while other examples related directly to the use of the word in the passage, thus bridging vocabulary instruction and passage comprehension.

4) Check understanding by asking questions.
Dr. Archer asked students questions to determine their understanding. In this lesson, students were asked to discern between examples and non-examples of 'elude' and later examples and non-examples of 'intention.'

Missed Opportunity: It would have been helpful to ask students how they knew that the exemplar was an example or non-example. This would have deepened students' thinking in regards to the word's meaning.
What other procedures were used to extend the vocabulary instruction?
Word Use - Students were asked to anticipate how the word 'elude' might be used in the passage. Not only did this require deeper knowledge of the word's meaning, but served to bridge vocabulary instruction and passage comprehension.
Teacher Use of Word - After 'elude' had been introduced, Dr. Archer immediately used the word within her own language ("Did he want to elude us?") Given that it takes multiple exposures to a word before a word's meaning is mastered, it is important that the teacher use the word as often as possible. This is one of the reasons for having a "Word Wall". You will have a visual reminder of the words that were recently taught.

Part of Speech - With older students, especially ELL's, it is helpful to introduce the part of speech. Of course, it would first be necessary that students understand the terms noun, verb, adjective, and adverb.
Logs - Students in every class should maintain a vocabulary log that includes at a minimum the vocabulary term and a definition. Students could also add an original sentence, an illustration, synonyms, etc. Vocabulary logs can be used for self-study, class review, and partner-study.

Word Relatives - The most expedient procedure for expanding students vocabulary is to introduce students to "word relatives" (intend, intention, intentional, intentional). The word relatives for intention were listed on the screen and a connected story was used to introduce the words. This practice illustrates the transparent morphemic nature of English and is especially important if the pronunciation of the relatives is altered (e.g., reform and reformation; wild and wilderness; protest and protestant) so that students can transfer the meaning from one word to the relatives.

Embedded Study Skills: One of the goals of Middle School is to teach the study skills that will support students academically in secondary schools and in higher education. Note-taking skills were reinforced as students wrote in their logs.
What delivery skills were used?
Active Participation: Dr. Archer requested continuous responses from the students to ascertain their learning and to increase on-task behavior. Those responses included:

a) Choral Responses. When the answers were short and the same, choral responses were requested.

b) Partner Responses. When the answers were long and different, Dr. Archer had students share their answers with their partners.

c) Written Responses. Students recorded entries in their logs.

Monitoring: When the students were sharing answers with their partners or writing in their logs, Dr. Archer circulated in the room and gave feedback including praise, encouragement, and corrections.

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Explicit Instructions | Effective and Efficient Teaching

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Grade Level: Sixth Grade - Middle School School: Fees Middle School Location: Tempe, Arizona Videographer: Dima Yaremenko Elapsed Time: 09:36 Introduction: Dr. Archer is preparing students to read a biography of Harriet Tubman including the following activities: a) teaching background knowledge, b) introducing the pronunciation of multi-syllabic words, and c) teaching critical vocabulary words.

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Download free word maps for the Core Vocabulary: the 2,500 words that account for 90% of the total words in texts from Grades 1 through college.

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Iowa Reading Research Center - The University of Iowa

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Does Spelling Practice Improve Reading for Students With Dyslexia?

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Allocating more opportunities to read words with feedback may be more efficient than spelling practice to support multisyllabic word reading for upper-elementary students with dyslexia.

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Free Resources for Vocabulary Instruction

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Resources for vocabulary instruction essential to reading success: core vocabulary, academic words, content vocabulary, & literary words.