The Two-Questions Method of Word Meaning Assessment: A Group Procedure for Use with Preliterate Children (Kearns & Biemiller)

This post is courtesy of Gail Kearns and Andrew Biemiller. Gail Kearns is a reading specialist and former teacher who founded a diagnostic and remedial reading clinic in Concord, Massachusetts. She worked for Jeanne Chall at Harvard University as a research assistant on readability projects and on the first edition of the Diagnostic Assessments of Reading (DAR); more recently she co-authored the Second Edition of the DAR. Gail also co-authored Trial Teaching Strategies (TTS), a useful tool for planning tutorials and interventions.  Andrew Biemiller, Professor Emeritus, University of Toronto, is a vocabulary researcher and the author of Words Worth Teaching: Closing the Vocabulary Gap. Andrew is advisor to the WGBH television program for young children, Martha Speaks. Please see  Andrew's prior post describing this educational and yet entertaining PBS program. Andrew is a national expert in reading and language comprehension, and has also investigated self-direction in schools. Gail and Andrew have collaborated together on vocabulary research, described below.

For too long, classroom teachers and researchers have been unable to assess vocabulary reliably and efficiently with classes of preliterate children—young children who either can’t read or can’t read reliably. These difficulties have made individual assessment of word meaning with such students a necessity. We believe the amount of time that has been needed for assessment is partly why educators have tended to neglect vocabulary with children in the primary grades and also why so few word meaning studies have been able to be conducted in these grades.

Young children’s general vocabulary level has been assessed to date with tests such as the well-known Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT). However, this test, like other such vocabulary tests for students in these grades, requires individual assessment, taking 15 to 25 minutes per student. This is more time than classroom teachers can spend with each child, particularly for regular assessment at intervals following instruction. Furthermore, the PPVT is largely limited to assessment of concrete meanings, i.e., word meanings that can be readily pictured.

We have recently published a study of our method for group testing vocabulary word meanings that was conducted with 257 students in grades K, 1, and 2 (Kearns & Biemiller, 2010). The results of our validation study demonstrated that results similar to individual PPVT assessments could also be obtained with our group method. (Correlations between overall children’s PPVT raw scores and scores from our group test were r = .76 in Kindergarten, r = .71 in Grade One, and r = .70 in Grade Two. Correlations between word mean scores from the two methods were .76 (Kindergarten), .79 (Grade 1), and .94 (Grade 2). In short, these results indicate that teachers could use this method both to determine overall vocabulary needs in classrooms, and to monitor the acquisition of word meanings and success of vocabulary instruction. Researchers could use this new group method to shorten the amount of time needed to conduct vocabulary acquisition studies in these grades.

In this entry, we want to briefly describe how the Two-Questions Vocabulary method is used for assessment of word meanings in the primary grades. Additional details for conducting such assessments are available from the authors and in our journal article about the study.

When constructing a Two-Questions assessment, each word should be assessed with two short questions, each of which can be answered with either “yes” or “no,” and with one “yes” question and one “no” question used for each word. For a child to be credited with knowledge of a word meaning, both questions have to be answered correctly. (When this is done, the odds of guessing a correct answer is the same as on the PPVT, where the student must choose 1 of 4 possible alternative pictures.)

With the exception of the assessed word, all other words in the questions are of high text frequency, and the questions are kept simple (no complex clauses, etc.). The two questions for each word are placed in random order on the test; they never follow each other and are kept as far apart as possible. In the study, we used one of the questions for each word in each test session. We chose equal numbers of “yes” and “no” questions (and arranged them in random order) for each test session.

Here are some examples of Two-Questions items taken from a test administrator’s form. (Words in these sample items have not been taken from the copyrighted PPVT test.)

Items from a sample administrator’s test form. (© Kearns & Biemiller, 2010). Graphics
used are from collection of 6,000 “Literacy Support Pictures,” courtesy Slater Software.

The authors strongly recommend use of a Student Response form, particularly when assessing kindergartners. Children are asked to circle a “yes” or “no” alternative for each item. We found that use of 5”x 7” cards for tracking items were also needed with kindergartners and for many first graders. Details of how best to use the cards and Response Sheets are available in the article or from the authors.

Sample items from a Student Response Sheet. (© Kearns & Biemiller, 2010). Graphics
used are from collection of 6,000 “Literacy Support Pictures,” courtesy Slater Software.

How long does administering the Two-Questions tests take? In our experience, the first time, we recommend two sessions on different days be used for assessing approximately 20 words. The first session will take about 45 minutes, with at least half of the session used to introduce the Response Sheet and to practice answering sample test items. The second session, conducted on a different day, should take 15 to 20 minutes. Second graders may be able to be assessed in a single session of about 50 minutes.

Later in the year, after the group assessment method has been used earlier with a classroom, and after the students have become familiar with how these tests are conducted, additional word meaning assessments for instructional purposes with the Two-Questions method may be able to be completed with single sessions of about 30 minutes for 20 words.

During the course of the study, we came to believe that an additional separate initial group session for training purposes would have been desirable for the kindergarten children and should be built into other studies involving group testing of word meanings in kindergarten.

In conclusion, we believe that this method can be used to create items for both assessing general vocabulary knowledge and for regularly testing samples of word meanings taught throughout the school year in the classroom. (We recommend teaching word meanings in the context of stories read aloud by the teacher and through other on-going classroom activities. Methods of teaching are discussed in Beck, McKeown, & Kucan (2002 and 2008), Graves (2006 and 2009), Stahl & Nagy (2006), Blachowicz & Fisher (2006), and Biemiller (2010). Ways of choosing words for instruction are discussed in the Beck et al and Biemiller books.

References
Beck, I. L., McKeown, M. G., & Kucan, L. (2002). Bringing Words to Life: Robust Vocabulary Instruction. New York: NY, Guilford Press Inc.

Beck, I. L., McKeown, M. G., & Kucan, L. (2008). Creating Robust Vocabulary: Frequently Asked Questions and Expanded Examples. New York: NY, Guilford Press Inc.

Biemiller, A. (2010). Words Worth Teaching. Columbus, OH: SRA/McGraw-Hill.

Blachowicz & Fisher (2009). Teaching Vocabulary in All Classrooms. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.

Graves, M. F. (2006). The Vocabulary Book: Learning and Instruction. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.

Graves, M. F. (2009). Teaching Individual Words: One Size Does Not Fit All. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.

Kearns, G., & Biemiller, A. (2010). Two-Questions vocabulary assessment: Developing a new method for group testing in kindergarten through second grade. Journal of Education, 190 (1/2), 31-41.

Stahl, S. A. & Nagy, W. E. (2006). Teaching Word Meanings. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Five-Day Plan for Developing Breadth of Vocabulary via Storybook Reading

This post builds on the prior post, which described how to use storybook reading to build depth of word knowledge. The upcoming third -- and final-- post in the storybook-reading series will describe how to use a method called "Dialogic Reading" to promote language, knowledge, and vocabulary (see published post by Jaci Urbani, Ph.D.).

Today, I describe a research-tested method for using storybooks to develop breadth of word knowledge so young children might learn many meanings relatively quickly, but not deeply. At the least, children need to be able to recognize a word when they hear it and understand its most common and least abstract meaning. Learning many meanings quickly but fairly superficially is an important goal, especially when the students know drastically fewer words than their peers. Children must rapidly develop a broad vocabulary, learning many meanings partially, yet well enough to get the gist of a variety of texts. (Sounds awfully tricky, but the brain was born for this! Language comes naturally to most of us and will flourish if carefully fostered in a word-rich learning environment.)

To learn more about the difference between partial knowledge and more complete mastery of word meanings in elementary grades, see Words Worth Teaching: Closing the Vocabulary Gap (Biemiller, 2010). This book is also an excellent resource when considering which words to teach (and see Fisher and Frey’s post on word selection).

Five-day plan for teaching vocabulary via storybook reading: This plan is based on Biemiller and Boote (2006) and on recent conversations with Dr. Biemiller. The goal is to teach many word meanings quickly and superficially. Thirty minutes per day were allocated for each lesson. Students were taught about 25-30 word meanings per week.

This plan is only a guide. Various factors need be considered, including the grade level and verbal proficiency of the students, the complexity of the target words, and the appeal of the story itself (who wants to hear a boring story four times?). As to that, Biemiller and Boote found that repeating the same story four times resulted in a larger effect size in kindergarten, compared to second grade.

At any rate, here is the basic five-day plan:

Day 1: If necessary, preteach one or two key concepts to enable comprehension of the story. For example, Biemiller and Boote (2006) pretaught circus before reading Clifford at the Circus. Prior to reading the story, 30% of the kindergartners were unfamiliar with the concept. Afterwards, 100% of them demonstrated an understanding of circus.

Read the story once without stopping. Then ask some basic comprehension questions, but do not teach any word meanings.

Day 2: Read the story again, stopping to briefly explain about 7-10 words. New comprehension questions are raised after reading. Word meanings taught that day are reviewed again after reading.

Day 3: Read the story again, stopping to briefly explain about 7-10 more words. New comprehension questions are raised after reading. Word meanings taught that day are reviewed again after reading. (Based on study 2 by Biemiller and Boote, and recent conversations with Biemiller, I suggest teachers briefly review all taught words.)

Day 4: Read the story again, stopping to briefly explain about 7-10 more words. New comprehension questions are raised after reading. Word meanings taught that day are reviewed again after reading.

Day 5: Briefly review all word meanings learned thus far. Informally assess learning. Provide each word in a different context (not context lifted from the story), perhaps asking students to respond with their thumbs-up or thumbs-down. Look for partial understanding of the meaning.

Interpreting your assessment results: Expect students to remember only about one-third to one-half of the words taught, at most, even if the meanings are reviewed cumulatively. In the second part of the study by Biemiller and Boote (2006), the teachers recommended adding more review to the methodology. Biemiller and Boote agreed with the modified procedure, so the teachers folded more review into the lessons. Thus, children learned and remembered about one-half of the words that were unknown to them, according to the pretest, on average. However, in other studies, children have learned and remembered only about one third of the taught words--sometimes not even that many.

Validate children for a job well done if they learn and remember only one-third to one-half of the words taught, because even in fairly optimal research conditions, the average child does not perform better.

Days 6 to… Revisit words in subsequent weeks and months, in varied context. Biemiller and Boote (2006) have found that retention of learned vocabulary was even greater six weeks after instruction. Why was retention greater six weeks later, when typically we forget things over time? Was the initial instruction successful enough so the children could continue to add to their lexical understanding through new context they encountered? Did the teachers continue to use the words in meaningful context? We do not know why the average child knew more meanings six weeks later, but this is certainly a happy finding!

Below, I provide an excerpt from Biemiller and Boote (2006). They discuss how many times to read a book, by grade level, and how each new reading provides another opportunity to learn more word meanings.

How Many Times Should Texts Be Reread?
In Grades 1 and 2, the percentage of meanings learned was about the same when books were read twice as when books were read four times (Study 1). (In kindergarten, reading books several times was more effective and is generally welcomed by children.) However, more word meanings can be taught in a week if the same book is read four times rather than two times. This is because different word meanings are taught on each of three readings rather than one. … The present method was effective, but the issue of repeated reading procedures requires more research. (p. 55)

Book selection: It is important to begin by selecting a suitable and captivating book. Suggestions for selecting books are discussed in the prior post and in Preschool: Where the Wild Words Are.  Biemiller and Boote (2006) used the following books, recommended by the classroom teachers and the school librarian.

Kindergarten

There Is More, Much More (Alexander, 1987)
Mud (Ray, 1996)
Something From Nothing (Gilman, 1992)
Clifford at the Circus (Bridwell, 1985)
Jillian Jiggs (Gilman, 1977)

Grade 1

Going Down the Road (Schertle, 1995)
The Seashore Book (Zolotow, 1992)
The Tree That Grew to the Moon (Fernandes, 1994)
Julian (Khalsa, 1989)

Grade 2

Drac and the Gremlin (Baillie & Tanner, 1991)
Alexander and the Wind-Up Mouse (Lionni, 1969)
Brenda and Edward (Kovalski, 1984)
The Chicken Cat (McLellan, 2000)

References:

Biemiller, A. (2010). Words worth teaching: Closing the vocabulary gap. Columbus, OH: SRA/McGraw-Hill.

Biemiller, A. & Boote, C. (2006). An effective method for building meaning vocabulary in primary grades. Journal of Educational Psychology, 98 (1), 44-62.

Supporting Early Vocabulary Development within an RTI Framework (Coyne)

This post is courtesy of Michael Coyne, associate professor in the Neag School of Education at the University of Connecticut and a Research Scientist at the Center for Behavioral Education and Research. His research on beginning reading and early vocabulary instruction and intervention is funded by the U.S. Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences (IES). Michael is a former special educator in public schools. His publications include a useful guide for teachers:  Effective Teaching Strategies That Accommodate Diverse Learners.  

RTI Supports

Schools are increasingly implementing response to intervention (RTI) or tiered systems of support in an attempt to more effectively and efficiently meet the beginning reading needs of all students, especially those students who are at risk for experiencing learning difficulties. Although there are many different components associated with RTI supports, central features include a) consistent high quality classroom, or Tier I, instruction, b) universal screening of all students using measures that are predictive of response to Tier I instruction, and 3) small group intensive, or Tier II, intervention that supplements classroom instruction for students identified as at-risk by screening measures (National Center on Response to Intervention, 2010).

Tiered intervention approaches provide a powerful framework for supporting student learning and practices associated with RTI have evidence of accelerating student achievement (Gersten et al., 2009). To date, however, the vast majority of RTI efforts have focused on increasing students’ beginning reading skills (e.g., phonemic awareness, alphabetic knowledge, decoding). We believe, however, that the field needs to think beyond decoding to how we can support other areas of early literacy, such as vocabulary development, within an RTI approach (Coyne et al., 2010).

Over the last six years we have been engaged in a program of research dedicated to developing and evaluating instructional strategies to support kindergarteners’ vocabulary development. Our approach to instruction includes directly teaching target vocabulary within storybook reading activities (Coyne, McCoach, & Kapp, 2007; Coyne et al., 2009). Key features of our instructional approach include, (a) supporting vocabulary development within oral language experiences, (b) providing students with multiple exposures to target vocabulary across varied contexts, and (c) encouraging students to process words deeply through rich and extended discussions (Beck, McKeown, & Kucan, 2002). As our research has progressed, we have learned a great deal about both the benefits of providing vocabulary instruction and intervention to young students as well as the challenges of supporting those students who are most at risk for language and literacy difficulties.

Classroom Vocabulary Instruction

In one of our initial studies we investigated the efficacy of providing extended classroom vocabulary instruction to kindergarten students within the context of storybook reading activities (Coyne et al., 2010). A total of 123 kindergarten students across three schools with high populations of at-risk learners participated in the 18-week study. In the extended instruction group, classroom teachers implemented vocabulary activities during whole class instruction. Each vocabulary word was introduced within the context of a storybook reading and reinforced in postreading activities that promoted extended dialogic interactions with the words. Our primary finding was that students who received the extended vocabulary instruction outperformed their peers who did not receive the instruction on both proximal measures of target word knowledge (assessing knowledge of the taught words) as well as transfer measures of generalized language and literacy.

Differential Response to Classroom Vocabulary Instruction

We were also interested in whether the classroom vocabulary instruction was more beneficial for some students than for others. We knew that many children enter school with limited experience with language and literacy (Hart & Risley, 1995) and that overall vocabulary knowledge measured prior to the start of instruction often predicts students’ response to instruction (e.g., Coyne et al., 2009; Penno Wilkinson, & Moore, 2002), so we examined the relationship between students’ initial receptive vocabulary and our outcome measures. We found that initial receptive vocabulary measured by the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT) was strongly related to posttest performance on all of our measures. In other words, students with higher initial PPVT scores learned significantly more vocabulary from the classroom vocabulary instruction than those students with lower initial scores and the magnitude of this differential response was striking. Tier 1 vocabulary instruction by itself, therefore, seemed insufficient to close the vocabulary gap among students, and, in fact, may have helped to widen it.

Supplemental Vocabulary Intervention

These findings highlighted the limitations of implementing only whole class, or Tier 1, vocabulary instruction and motivated a new direction in our research. We began to recognize the need to conceptualize vocabulary supports within a multitier or RTI approach. We wanted to investigate the benefits of Tier 2 vocabulary intervention designed to supplement classroom-based vocabulary instruction for those students identified as most at risk for language and learning difficulties based on universal screening (Loftus et al., 2010). We were also interested in the feasibility of schools providing RTI vocabulary supports in authentic settings using existing resources and personnel.

In our most recent study (Coyne et al., 2011), a new group of 20 kindergarten classroom teachers across seven schools that served large numbers of students at risk for learning difficulties implemented Tier 1 vocabulary instruction using Elements of Reading: Vocabulary, a widely available evidence-based vocabulary program, based on the work of Isabel Beck and Margaret McKeown (2007). We worked with all students during whole class instruction for 15–20 minutes per day, 5 days per week, over the course of the school year. All kindergarten students were screened in the fall with the PPVT to identify students who were most in need of supplemental vocabulary support (approximately 3–6 students per class). These students received Tier 2 small-group vocabulary intervention in addition to the classroom instruction for 15–20 minutes per day, 4 days per week. We designed the supplemental Tier 2 intervention to provide more explicit instruction with many opportunities for individual responses followed by immediate corrective feedback. The Tier 2 instruction was provided by school-based personnel (e.g., teachers, paraprofessionals, specialists).

We analyzed our data using a regression-discontinuity approach, which allowed us to estimate the benefit of the Tier 2 intervention for those students who were identified as at risk for not responding to the Tier 1 instruction by itself. Overall, we found that the at-risk students experienced statistically significantly greater vocabulary learning than would have been predicted if they had received only Tier 1 classroom support. Most importantly, the at-risk students who received Tier 2 intervention learned target vocabulary equally as well, on average, as their not-at-risk peers.

In summary, when we screened students on a measure that is predictive of the response to Tier 1 vocabulary instruction and provided at-risk students with supplemental supports, their word learning was comparable to their not-at-risk peers. At least for the target words, we were able to substantially counteract the vocabulary learning gap. However, these gains came as the result of a sizeable investment in instructional time and resources. Students received double the amount of instructional dosage (4 hours versus 2 hours per week) and received intervention in small groups of 3–4 that required allocating additional staff time.

Implications

The need for early intervention and prevention efforts in early literacy extends beyond supporting students’ code-based skills. We know that students enter kindergarten with “meaningful differences” in vocabulary knowledge (Hart & Risley, 1995), and these differences grow larger over time even as vocabulary knowledge becomes more and more critical to reading success (Biemiller & Slonim, 2001). Moreover, although there is growing evidence that classroom-based, vocabulary instruction that is direct and extended supports learning, it is not equally effective for all students. Therefore, we believe that schools should conceptualize vocabulary instruction and intervention within an RTI or multitier approach. It is only with supplemental intervention at high levels of intensity that students at risk of language and literacy difficulties will make progress that will allow them to begin to decrease, or even intercept, the vocabulary differences between them and their peers who are not at risk. 

A note from the editor: This post summarizes research findings and teaching tips reported in Coyne, Capozzoli, Ware, and Loftus (2010). For more details, read the entire article. In addition, several guest authors have discussed ways to help young children develop vocabulary. In the sidebar, under Posts by Guest Authors, see entries by Biemiller, Cavanaugh, Graves, and Paulson. For suggestions on how to help impoverished or undereducated parents become partners in early literacy development, read the post by Michele Berg.

References

• Beck, I. L., & McKeown, M. G. (2007). Increasing young low-income children’s oral vocabulary repertoires through rich and focused instruction. Elementary School Journal, 107, 251–271.
• Beck, I. L., McKeown, M. G., & Kucan, L. (2002). Bringing words to life: Robust vocabulary instruction. New York: Guilford.
• Biemiller, A., & Slonim, N. (2001). Estimating root word vocabulary growth in normative and advantaged populations: Evidence for a common sequence of vocabulary acquisition. Journal of Educational Psychology, 93, 498–520.
•  Coyne, M. D., Capozzoli, A., Ware, S., & Loftus, S. (2010) Beyond RTI for Decoding: Supporting Early Vocabulary Development within a Multitier Approach to Instruction and Intervention. Perspectives on Language and Literacy, 18-21.
• Coyne, M. D. (2011, July). Supporting early vocabulary development within a multi-tier approach to instruction and intervention: A regression discontinuity study. Paper accepted at the Society for the Scientific Studies of Reading Annual Conference.
• Coyne, M. D., McCoach, D. B., Loftus, S., Zipoli, R., Ruby, M., Crevecoeur, Y. & Kapp, S. (2010). Direct & Extended Vocabulary Instruction in Kindergarten: Investigating Transfer Effects. Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness, 3, 93-120.
• Coyne, M. D., McCoach, D. B., Loftus, S., Zipoli, R., & Kapp, S. (2009). Direct vocabulary instruction in kindergarten: Teaching for breadth vs. depth. Elementary School Journal 110, 1–18.
• Coyne, M. D., McCoach, D. B., & Kapp, S. (2007). Vocabulary intervention for kindergarten students:Comparing extended instruction with embedded instruction and incidental exposure. Learning Disabilities Quarterly, 30, 74–88.
• Gersten, R., Compton, D., Connor, C. M., Dimino, J., Santoro, L., Linan-Thompson, S., et al. (2009). Assisting students struggling with reading: Response to intervention and multi-tier intervention for reading in the primary grades. A practice guide (NCEE 2009-4045). Washington, DC: National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance, Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education. Retrieved March 31, 2011 from http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/pdf/practiceguides/rti_reading_pg_021809.pdf
• Hart, B., & Risley, R. T. (1995). Meaningful differences in the everyday experience of young American children. Baltimore: Paul H. Brookes.
• Loftus, S., Coyne, M. D., McCoach, D. B., Zipoli, R., & Pullen, P. (2010). Effects of a supplemental vocabulary intervention on the word knowledge of kindergarten students at-risk for language and literacy difficulties. Learning Disabilities Research & Practice, 25, 124-136.
• National Center on Response to Intervention (March 2010). Essential Components of RTI – A Closer Look at Response to Intervention. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs, National Center on Response to Intervention.
• Penno, J. F., Wilkinson, I. A. G., & Moore, D. W. (2002). Vocabulary acquisition from teacher explanation and repeated listening to stories: Do they overcome the Matthew Effect? Journal of Educational Psychology, 94, 23–33.

Common SAT Errors and How to Avoid Them (Holt)

Thanks to Miriam Holt for contributing this post. She tutors students in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut, both independently and with local tutoring agencies.  She has prepared over a hundred students for the SAT in the past six years and humorously admits, "I have come to respect the SAT." This post addresses five SAT tasks that are pertinent to reading and writing.  For each task, Miriam describes what she views as the most common types of errors; for each type of error, she offers brief suggestions for instruction. Miriam can be reached through Parliament Tutors.

1. Essay
-Writing an off-topic essay
How to fix it: Students must focus like a laser on the quote in the box and the essay prompt that follows it.  Those words must determine the topic of the essay.
 
-Spending too long on the intro paragraph and shortchanging the body
How to fix it: This pitfall can be avoided by starting with the body paragraphs, about a third of the way down the first page, and then adding the conclusion and the introduction in their appropriate spots after the body paragraphs are written.
 
-Errors in grammar and punctuation
How to fix it: Student must save time at the end to proofread.
 
-Wandering, disorganized writing
How to fix it: Student must outline to ensure the essay progresses in a clear, well-reasoned way.
 
-Accidentally proving the other guy's point: Some students set out to write an essay supporting one idea and, while writing it, find themselves making so many concessions to the other side that their essays end up supporting the other side more than their own
How to fix it: Student should write the body paragraphs first, evaluate them afterward to figure out what point they prove the best, and let that determine the conclusion of the essay.  After writing the conclusion, they should go back and write the intro paragraph, including the thesis statement.
 
-Mental lock: under pressure, the student freezes up and can't think of any examples to prove the chosen position
How to fix it: Student should create and practice using a repertoire of useful fiction, historical events, and personal stories which have material in them that lends itself well to proving the sort of positions suggested by the essay prompts.  Abraham Lincoln, the French Revolution, Huckleberry Finn, Lord of the Rings, and Romeo and Juliet seem to be popular among many students for their broad applicability, but each student must assemble his or her own favorite materials.
 
2. Critical Reading: Sentence Completion
-Over-Suggestibility: student sees an answer that "sounds good" and becomes enamoured of it, believing that the answer is correct without checking to see whether the words fit what is required by the sentence
How to fix it: Student should cover up the answer choices and read the sentence, analyzing it carefully and making guesses as to what sorts of words ought to go in the blanks, writing down those guesses in the blanks, and only then uncovering the answer choices to seek synonyms of those guesses.  Important: if the sentence has two blanks, the student should try starting with the second blank.  It's usually easier to figure out what goes in the second blank than in the first one.
 
-Disregarding unknown words and only considering familiar words: this is a tempting error that many students make because they just don't want to have to deal with words they don't know.
How to fix it: We use two different sets of strategies depending on whether the sentence has one or two blanks. These are described below. 

One-blank sentence: If it's at the end of the group of sentence completion questions, expect the answer to be a word that's more obscure than familiar.  Eliminate answer choices that seem like easy words.  Then, look at the sentence again to figure out what kind of word ought to go in the blank.  These sentences will usually incorporate a definition of the missing word into the sentence itself, so the student should locate that definition and, covering up the answer choices, think of a good word to go into the blank and then try to find something that could be a synonym for that guess from the remaining answer choices.

Two-blank sentence: Student must rate each individual word more consciously, by assigning it a plus sign if it works well in its blank, a minus sign if it is certainly not a good choice, and a zero if the student isn't sure.  Unfamiliar words get zeros.  Student should only eliminate pairs of words that have one or two negative ratings. Remaining pairs of words should be chosen based on whichever has the most plus signs.  If there are still too many choices, more choices can sometimes be eliminated based on what the relationship needs to be between the two words.  For example, if the words in the sentence's blanks need to be opposites but the words in an answer choice are synonyms, the answer choice can be eliminated.
 
-Weak Vocabulary
How to fix it: Student should devote several hours per week to studying Greek and Latin roots and prefixes.  Flash cards and mnemonics may help.  Once a student knows roots and prefixes, the words in the answer choices can be broken down to give clues about what the word means.  For example, if we're looking for a word that means something like 'irritable and quarrelsome' and must choose between sanctimonious and cantankerous, even if we have no idea what cantankerous means, we can choose it over sanctimonious if we know that sancti has something to do with holiness--completely unrelated to irritability and quarreling--and should therefore be eliminated.
 
3. Critical Reading: Passage-Based Questions
-Reading too slowly/Not absorbing the content/Zoning out/Not paying attention while reading
How to fix it: Student should try 2 things:
a. Read as though he or she will be asked to recount the entire passage from memory after one reading;
b. Skip the passage and go straight to the questions with line number references in them: read the questions, then read a portion of the passage from two lines above the reference line to two lines below to search for the answer, and then look at the answer choices to pick the best one. After answering these questions, the student should proceed to the questions that ask about the passage as a whole.
 
-Attraction to strongly-worded answer choice
How to fix it: Student should be aware that the correct answer is often moderately worded, and the answer choices with more extreme or black/white wordings--containing words like "never" and "always"--are often incorrect.
 
-Getting bogged down in reading the answer choices, taking too long to decide
How to fix it: Student should, whenever possible, read the question with the answer choices covered up and try to anticipate what the correct answer will be, and then look for that answer in the choices.
 
-Imprecise analysis of answer choices: student fails to consider everything that an answer choice is saying, and chooses it even though it is only partly correct
How to fix it: Student must be carefully precise when reading answer choices, eliminating an entire answer choice even if only a single word makes it wrong.  If the passage says dogs are often loyal to their masters, an answer choice saying "dogs are always loyal to their masters" is wrong and should be eliminated.
 
-Failure to identify the tone of the passage
How to fix it: Student should try considering what sort of voice a reader would use to read the passage aloud.
 
-Confusing the content of the 1st passage with the content of the 2nd
How to fix it: Student should pause after reading the 1st passage and jot down a few notes about its content to let the information solidify before moving onto the 2nd passage.

4. Grammar/Writing: Sentence Correction
-Confusing the object of a prepositional phrase for the subject of a sentence, and thus choosing the wrong verb, e.g. choosing “None of us are going,” instead of the correct version, “None of us is going.”
How to fix it: Students should learn to recognize prepositions and put brackets around prepositional phrases so that they can help themselves find the true subject of the sentence.
 
-Failing to consider a small word at the beginning of the sentence
How to fix it: Student should remember that just because a word shows up early in the sentence doesn’t mean it’s correct.  Scrutinize prepositions and conjunctions appearing at the beginnings of sentences.
 
-Failing to look for parallel structures
How to fix it: Student must become accustomed to requiring parallel structures in sentence construction on the SAT, even when we would not hold such strict requirements for other formal writing.  According to the SAT, this sentence is incorrect: “To call her narrow-minded is like calling water wet,” but this one is correct: “Calling her narrow-minded is like calling water wet.”
 
-Permitting a misplaced modifier
How to fix it: Students should make sure that dependent clauses with unspecified subjects are placed adjacent to their subjects in the sentence, e.g. “Carrying an umbrella, Carol didn’t mind the rain,” instead of “Carrying an umbrella, the rain didn’t bother Carol.”  The second example is wrong because, technically, it implies that it was the rain who was carrying an umbrella.
 
-Choosing the wrong pronoun #1: pronoun case
How to fix it: Student must learn the difference between a subject and an object and must clearly understand when to use which pronoun case.  If a pronoun appears as the object of a prepositional phrase, that pronoun should always be in the objective case.  The SAT loves to try to catch students who don't know this rule.
Subjective case: I, you, he/she/it/who/one, we, you, they
Objective case: Me, you, him,her/it/whom/one, us, you, them
 
-Choosing the wrong pronoun #2: pronoun number
How to fix it: Student should resist the temptation to replace words like “someone” or “anyone” or “everyone” with pronouns like “they” and “them”, because plural pronouns cannot replace singular nouns.  Instead, the student must choose singular pronouns such as “him”, “her”, “he”, “she”, and “one”.
 
-Permitting an unspecified pronoun
How to fix it: Students should be sure pronouns only appear in sentences that also explicitly state which noun the pronoun replaces.  This is wrong: “He promised to cut taxes and improve services, but he failed to keep them,” but this is right: “He made promises to cut taxes and improve services, but he failed to keep them.”  “Promised” is not a noun and cannot be replaced with a pronoun, but “promises” is a noun, so it’s fine to use a pronoun to replace it.
 
-Untrained ear: some students can’t detect grammatical errors easily because they’ve never been trained to speak or write according to the rules of grammar which the SAT uses
How to fix it: Student probably needs to take a course in grammar. 
 
5. General Test-Taking
-Student's performance starts out high and gets lower and lower as she or he moves from the beginning to the end of the test/Student can't focus on the test for 4 hours straight and gets mentally exhausted
How to fix it: Student should make sure to get enough sleep, have enough to eat and drink, and practice lengthening the attention span by, e.g. reading difficult books for several hours at a time and by taking practice tests under simulated testing conditions.
 
-Bubbling errors: student bubbles an answer in the wrong row, possibly because of skipping a question on the text booklet but forgetting to leave a blank row in the answer sheet
How to fix it: Student should bubble answers in groups of 5, or should finish all the problems on a page and then bubble in their answers all at once.  This strategy saves a little bit of time, too.
 
-Failing to complete a section
How to fix it: Student should not linger over questions in uncertainty, but rather answer as many answerable questions as possible, skimming over the difficult ones and coming back to them later if time allows, but meanwhile gathering all the points for right answers that can be easily gathered.

Miriam (at Parliament Tutors dot com)

Building Prior Knowledge of Concepts (Lord)

(Please respond to the survey in the sidebar to the left.)

Kathleen Lord is an assistant professor of Literacy Education at the State University of New York - New Paltz. Her research interests include comprehension, particularly pertaining to conceptual development and knowledge acquisition. Dr. Lord can be reached at lordk@newpaltz.edu. 

Individually, I interviewed 102 fourth graders, asking them about social studies concepts. Responses varied widely, depending on the concept itself. Three examples are shown below (interviewer’s prompts are in parentheses):

1: "What does paying taxes mean?”

Results: Only 22% provided an example of paying taxes or defined the word. Some students explained that money is collected at the store and that you pay more money than the price of the item; however, students had no idea what the money is used for.
Responses included: When you buy something and it is one dollar and you pay seven cents. (What do they do with it?) They put it in the drawer. (Then what do they do with it?) They collect it and give it back as change.”

Question 2: "What does inventing something mean?”

Results: This time, 52% provided a definition or an example of “inventing something,” referring to Thomas Edison and different inventions. Among those not receiving credit for their answers, students explained inventing something as “making something” like arts and crafts or bacon and eggs, whereas four students said, “when you lie” or “making a story up.”

Question 3: "What does making a trade mean?”
Results: A whopping 80% of the students provided correct explanations for “making a trade.” Responses included trading Yu-Gi-Oh or Pokemon cards, and trading school items such as pencils and stickers (Lord, 2007).

Students answered questions pertaining to trade, but had difficulty answering questions about taxation and invention. Why? The difference appears to be experience. Some concepts are known to young students, whereas other concepts are either emerging or are not yet known. If students have never invented something, discovered the unknown, or been involved in a rebellion, it is unlikely that they would recognize these situations when encountered in text. Often, young readers are being introduced to concepts that they have had little or no previous exposure to, and these unknown or emerging concepts may interfere with their comprehension.

Conceptual knowledge is not only important for reading in the content areas but is crucial for reading and learning, period. It is nearly impossible to reason, interpret, analyze, infer, or answer questions that require higher-order thinking if the reader does not understand the big ideas presented in the text. Inevitably, these gaps in understanding impede learning and comprehension.

Prior knowledge: It is often thought that students gain knowledge from text. Students actually modify knowledge that they already have (Catts, 2009; Kintsch, 1998). When new information connects to an existing knowledge structure, this prior knowledge (or schema) serves as a foundation for new ideas encountered in text and leads to the construction of a situation model (van Dijk & Kintsch, 1983). This is critical to comprehension and results in a deeper understanding of the information in the text. Research has repeatedly shown that children and adults with prior knowledge about a topic have better comprehension of the text than those with no prior knowledge (Chiesi, Spilich, & Voss, 1979; Pearson, Hansen, & Gordon, 1979; Spilich, Vesonder, Chiesi, & Voss, 1979; Taylor, 1979). In fact, less skilled readers can actually outperform skilled readers when they have more prior knowledge (Kintsch, 1998; Recht & Leslie, 1988; Schneider, Korkel, & Weinert, 1989; Taylor, 1979).

But where does this prior knowledge come from? One avenue is via life experiences. When a student visits various zoos on many occasions, he/she constructs a “zoo” schema. When reading about the zoo, the zoo schema (existing knowledge structure) is activated and this schema serves as an anchor for new information about the zoo. The concept of “zoo” is fairly concrete, tangible. The Bronx Zoo and the San Diego Zoo are specific examples of the concept of zoo. We generalize the concept of zoo from specific examples.

Not all concepts are concrete. Concepts can also include ways of thinking, feeling, or behaving, e.g., democracy, conflict, exploration, justice, migration, or adaptation (Walker, 2009). Specific examples of the concept of exploration include Sally Ride and space exploration, Columbus and his discoveries, Robert Ballard and his exploration of the Titanic, and famous archeologists and their specific investigations. Again, students need specific examples in order to generalize the abstract concept of exploration.

Consider the historical period prior to the American Revolution, information introduced in fourth and fifth grades. In Table 1 below, some specific topics and events are given in the left column and the recurring concepts are listed in the right column. The abstract concepts in the right column are generic ideas generalized from the specific examples in the left column.

Table 1: Topics and events with associated concepts

Specific Topics and/or Events	Concepts
French and Indian War	Conflict; treaties; compromise
Stamp Act, Sugar Act, tea tax	Taxation
Yelling "No Taxation without representation!"	Protest
Sons of Liberty; burning down tax collectors' homes; tossing tea into harbor	Rebellion
Refusing to purchase things from Britain	Boycott
Throughout the period	Independence; democracy; freedom; liberty; colonization; representative government

These concepts recur, but not only during history instruction, throughout life. If learned deeply, students will be able to access these concepts to use as prior knowledge when learning new content. Notably, if students remain either unaware of the concept/s or have had no experience with the concept/s, their comprehension of the text will be hindered.

An instructional model: We have a dilemma. How do we teach content that will eventually become the prior knowledge needed for new learning? Below, I provide a model to guide the planning process.

1. Identify concept/s: Identify concepts within the topics or events. Determine students’ understanding, as well as their misconceptions, of the key concepts that will be encountered during instruction.

2. Plan for depth and breadth: Depth is needed for schema development. Breadth is needed for transfer. Depth involves teaching so that students understand the concept well and can utilize it in new contexts. Breadth involves providing varied experiences within the concept in order to promote transfer to new contexts.

For instance, when teaching exploration, provide in-depth instruction and experiences with exploring, and then orchestrate instruction that exposes students to varied instances of explorers and exploration. Begin instruction with a known or familiar event (Columbus). Then extend to other types of exploration, providing specific instruction concerning similarities and differences among different explorers. By linking historical explorers to present-day explorers, students’ knowledge of exploration will extend beyond their limited understanding that explorers were people from centuries ago.

3. Locate material to teach the concept: Once the concept is identified, locate material to teach the concept. Select books and other resources that expose students to various situations of the same concept in order to teach for transfer. Learning can be enriched and deepened when taught with children’s literature and biographies. Additionally, literature serves as a common classroom experience to refer to throughout the unit. For instance, reading aloud a trade book about a child immigrating or sharing a book about a child escaping slavery through the Underground Railroad provide foundations to build upon.

4. Determine essential question/s: Let the students help you form these questions. Essential questions keep the unit focused. These questions are pertinent to the “big ideas” that will be encountered throughout a unit of study. Encourage students’ questions about the concept and use these to generate essential questions concerning the big ideas. During instruction, return to the questions so that students recognize how each lesson pertains to the big ideas.

For an immigration unit, consider questions such as, “Why do people move?” “How do they get there?” “How do they assimilate?” “Where do they come from and where do they go?” provide an anchor for each lesson.

5. Vocabulary: Teach vocabulary associated with the concept and revisit this vocabulary often and throughout the unit. Beyond the obvious words taught throughout an exploration unit (e.g., explore, discover, journey, investigate), include other words pertaining to character feelings and traits (e.g., tenacious, risk-taking, adventurous, courageous, intrepid, resolute) and modes of transportation (e.g., submarine, rocket, ship, Conestoga wagon).

6. Plan authentic activities and establish a purpose: Build background knowledge by allowing students opportunities to experience the concepts, while making direct connections to the to-be-learned content. One thing we can count on is that students’ authentic experiences can serve as conceptual prior knowledge. These experiences involve exploration, invention, compromise, conflict, community building, representative government, democratic leadership, and economic decisions. They include observing cycles and adaptation, creating habitats, and experiencing motion and velocity.

In the classroom, utilize familiar experiences or create common experiences to anchor subsequent learning (e.g., designing an exploration scenario; posing a dilemma in need of an inventive solution; introducing classroom elections and government; taxing students). Additionally, establish a genuine purpose for the unit such as preparing students to interview a present-day inventor, explorer, elected official, or tax collector.

These activities, in addition to reading children’s literature, provide common classroom experiences for instruction, as well as the prior knowledge needed for new learning to take hold.

Basal reading programs: If utilizing a basal reading program, the thematic unit can be enriched in similar manner. Each unit is based on a conceptual theme. Identify or modify questions provided by the publisher, and/or develop essential questions based on students’ questions. Introduce key concept vocabulary beyond the story vocabulary. Locate relevant children’s books including chapter books beyond the weekly story selections, and begin, intentionally, to teach concepts for transfer.

(Click "Read more" for the references)

The Slippery Suffix -er (Survey)

MA stands for morphological awareness, which involves understanding the internal structure of words, including knowledge of affixes and roots. It is a type of linguistic insight. Read more about MA.

In a longitudinal study of growth curves across grades 1-6, Berninger, Abbott, Nagy, and Carlisle (2010) found that MA grew rapidly across grades 1-3 and continued to grow--more slowly--through grade 6 (at least). In contrast, growth in phonological awareness tapered off by third grade for most students. Growth in orthographic awareness (awareness of wrong-looking spellings, for example; the ability to store, form and access orthographic knowledge, knowledge of "legal" and "illegal" letter order, etc.) continued beyond third grade, especially for expressive knowledge. More pertinent to vocabulary growth, they found that students who have an understanding of derivational morphology are more likely to develop a larger vocabulary, compared to peers who do not understand the morphosyntactic principles of English words. This finding confirms prior research on the relationship between derivational morphology and vocabulary growth (see, for example, Anglin, 1993).

This makes sense, because derivational suffixes have the potential to change the part of speech and meaning of the base to which they are added. They create a different word. For example, the word boy is a noun but the derivational suffix -ish creates the adjective boyish (no longer a noun, no longer a boy--could be a girl, man, etc.). Derivations are often nuanced, abstract, academic. Learn more at Derivations and Syntax. To develop breadth of word knowledge, children must gradually understand how derivational suffixes work.

Buffalo Public Schools

We teach the suffix -er in primary grades. We teach two types of the suffix. The derivational suffix -er creates an agent noun, 'one who.' With the delightful teacher-created word tree at left, children are shown the transformation from dance (the verb) to dancer (the noun/agent/person). This same derivational suffix can also form an object-as-agent, as in cooler ('that which cools').

A second function of the suffix -er is inflectional. Unlike derivational suffixes, inflectional suffixes do not create a different word; they just create another form of the same word. They do not change the part of speech of the base word to which they are affixed. When added to an adjective, the inflectional suffix -er creates another adjective with the same basic meaning, but of greater degree. So, adding the inflectional suffix -er to the adjective warm creates the comparative adjective warmer.

A third, and far less productive function of the suffix -er, is to create a sense of jocularity, as in soccer. There are very few words of this type, but here are a few more. (Read the story of the word soccer at this link.)

A fourth possible function of -er, one that theoretically flows from Old English, was to create a verb characterized by small repetitive motions: stammer, flicker, flutter, shiver. If so, this function no longer exists; it is not productive; we cannot express stammer as stam(m) + -er. Read more.

Students need to learn to think analytically about the two main functions of the suffix -er, to better understand word formation and meaning. Teachers might have students sort the derivational -er from the inflectional -er, as begun here:
 

-er (one who)      -er (that which)      -er (more)            -er (not a suffix)

noun                    noun                      adjective            

thinker                   bobber                    greener               summer

buyer                     blender                   rougher               her

Resources: To find lists of words ending with the letters er (suffix or not), scroll down on this page to the hyperlinks listed under Morphology. There are two websites that apply, More Words and Word Searcher. To determine whether any given word ends with the suffix -er, try etymonline.com. 

Now to the survey of the slippery suffix -er: Do the two words share the same suffix? Answers are shown below the survey. The survey has closed.
If the survey does not display properly, click the question (a hyperlink).

twiigs.com

1. colder -- speaker: No. The  inflectional suffix -er in colder creates the comparative form of cold, an adjective. The derivational suffix -er in speaker creates a noun (an agent, one who).

2. seer -- fortuneteller: Yes. Both words end with the derivational suffix -er, creating an agent noun. The American Heritage Dictionary defines seer as 'one who sees' and orthographic awareness would tell us that seeer just looks wrong. Rules of spelling support this type of awareness: When a base (in this case, see) ends in a vowel, and we want to add a suffix that begins with a vowel (in this case, -er), we must first drop the vowel at the end of the base word; then we add the suffix. (Read about seer at etymonline.com.)

3. thinker -- dreamer: Yes. Both words end with the derivational suffix -er, creating an agent, a noun.

4. faster -- sweeter:  Yes. Both words end with the inflectional suffix -er, creating a comparative adjective.

 5. computer -- singer: Yes (and no, in another sense). Both words end with the derivational suffix -er, creating a noun, but the -er in computer generally implies a nonperson and the -er in singer generally implies a person. This is where morphology and semantics intersect with context.

6. steamer -- burner:  Yes. Both words end with the derivational suffix -er and in each case, the -er creates an object as an agent, not a person.

7. deer -- slipper: No. Deer does not contain a suffix at all, but slipper contains the derivational suffix -er, creating an agent noun, an object that "slips on" easily.

8. stronger -- taller:  Yes. Both words end with the inflectional suffix -er, creating a comparative adjective.

9. hammer -- hamburger:  No. Hammer does not contain a suffix.  Hamburger does; it apparently got its name from Hamburg, Germany, home of the hamburger steak. Michael Quinion provides interesting details on the origins of hamburger. Less likely: The suffix -er in hamburger may indicate jocularity (read more).

10. butter -- toaster: No. Butter does not contain a suffix at all (it may have contained two morphemes, meaning 'cow' and 'cheese,' in Old English). Toaster ends with the derivational suffix -er, creating an agent nonperson (unless, of course, we are talking about the person who works the toaster. Need context!).

In the classroom, this type of survey lends itself to critical thinking and peer discussion, followed by explicit teacher feedback. There is great value in this type of instructional conversation.

PS. At a more advanced level of morphological awareness (which includes knowledge), we come to realize that the English/Germanic suffix -er in dreamer and thinker corresponds with the Latin suffix -or in governor and senator. 

References:

• Anglin, J. M. (1993). Vocabulary development: A morphological analysis. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 58(10)[238], v-165. 
• Berninger, V.W., Abbott, R.D., Nagy, W., & Carlisle, J. (2010).Growth in phonological, orthographic, and morphological awareness in grades 1 to 6. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 39, 141–163.

Building Oral Vocabulary in Primary-Grade Students with Very Small Oral Vocabularies (Graves)

This post is courtesy of Dr. Michael Graves, Professor Emeritus of Literacy Education at the University of Minnesota. As a researcher, Mike has examined--and continues to examine--variables related to vocabulary development and instruction. His most recent books on vocabulary are written for teachers as well as researchers, including Teaching Individual Words: One Size Does Not Fit All (2009), and The Vocabulary Book (2006). To read about Mike's comprehensive plan for vocabulary instruction, detailed fully in The Vocabulary Book, see my post: Four Ply Vocabulary Plan.

      
Vocabulary has been my major scholarly interest for something like 30 years, and over that period of time we have learned a huge amount about teaching vocabulary (see, for example, Baumann, Kameénui, & Ash, 2000; Blachowicz & Fisher, 2000; Graves & Silverman, in press). Most of what we have learned, however, is about teaching reading vocabulary. Recently, we have come to recognize that some students come to school with very small oral vocabularies (Hart & Risley, 1995, 2001). While most students arrive at school with oral vocabularies of perhaps 10,000 words, some English learners and some children of poverty arrive knowing just a fraction of that number of words. Building oral vocabulary in students who enter school with very small oral vocabularies is tremendously important and vital to their becoming successful readers (Biemiller, 2009, DeTemple & Snow, 2004; Graves, 2009).
       
Two key questions we face in helping these children are "How do we teach them oral vocabulary? and "Which words do we teach them?"  In this blog, I address each of these in turn.
 

How Do We Teach Oral Vocabulary to Primary-Grade Students with Very Small Vocabularies?     
Both observations of mothers reading to their young children and studies with preschool and primary grade students have repeatedly revealed a successful pattern of reading aloud and build oral vocabulary that goes by the name of interactive oral reading or shared book reading (DeTemple & Snow, 2004). There are several versions of the technique, but one of the best documented is that described by Biemiller (2009). It consists of selecting a number of short books, each of which contain 20 or so words that are not likely to be in your students' oral vocabularies, and working with each book over a five day cycle like this one.

• On day one, probably a Monday, read the book once without stopping to define any words.
• On days two-four, read it three more times, each time briefly defining about six unknown words as they come up in the reading so that over the three days you define about 20 words.
• On the fifth day, review each of the 20 or so words taught in a different context but with the same meaning.

    
As Biemiller notes and as I would emphasize, because these children need to add a large number of words to their oral vocabularies, this is a long term process, extending over several years for many students.

Mike Graves, Pa ai Beach

Which Words Should We Teach Primary-Grade Students with Very Small Oral Vocabularies?     
Here, I consider two different groups of students and suggest a different source of words for each of these two. The first group is students with extremely small oral vocabularies, probably fewer than 2,000 words. There are not many of these students in a single classroom, probably only 2-4 of them even in a class with quite a few newcomers and children of poverty. However, those students who do fall into this group desperately need our help. The most important words for these students to learn are those that occur most frequently, those that they will stumble across repeatedly as they are reading if they don't know them. 

My colleague Greg Sales and I (Sales & Graves, 2009) have identified a set of about 4,000 words that we term The First 4,000 Words and created a web-based program to teach them. These words make up about 80 percent of the words in a typical text. This list, which ranks the words by frequency, and a description of the web-based program for teaching them are available at thefirst4000words.com. The list is in pdf format and available for download. To give you an idea of the words the list contains, the five most frequent words on it are the, of, and, to, and a; five middle-frequency words on it are file, boots, reflect, custom, and background; and the five least frequent words on it are abuse, loving, generous, excessive, and arteries. As I just said, you are likely to have very few students in your class that don't already know these words, but for students who do not already know them learning them is crucial.
    
The second group of students who need special help with oral vocabulary consists of students who already know most of The First 4,000 Words but whose oral vocabularies are still far smaller than those of average students. This is a considerably larger number of students, and if you teach a class that includes a number of newcomers and children of poverty a significant number of students in your class may fall into this group. Fortunately, Biemiller (2009) has developed a list of words specifically designed for building oral vocabulary in these students. It is called Words Worth Teaching in Grades K-2 and includes about 2,000 words, most of which are less frequent than those on The First 4,000 Words.  Some of the words from this list, which is not sequenced by importance or frequency, are absorb, against, laboratory, language, stumble, and study. The complete list is available in Biemiller (2009).
    
In summary, the main message here is that while most students come to school with large oral vocabularies, other students—some English learners and some children of poverty—come with very small oral vocabularies, and these students need special help. A technique called Interactive Oral Reading has been shown to be an effective teaching tool, and Sales and Graves (2009) The First 4,000 Words and Biemiller's (2009) Words Worth Teaching in Grades K-2 provide appropriate words to teach.

I look forward to your comments and suggestions. 

Mike Graves

References:

• Baumann, J. F., Kame'enui, E. J., & Ash, G. E.  (2003).  Research on vocabulary instructing:  Voltaire redux.  In J. Flood, D. Lapp, J. R. Squire, & J. M. Jensen (Eds.), Handbook on research on teaching the English language arts (2nd ed., pp. 752-785.  Mahwah, NJ:  Erlbaum.
• Biemiller, A.  (2009).  Words worth teaching.  Columbus, OH:  SRA/McGraw-Hill.
• Blachowicz, C., & Fisher, P.  (2000).  Vocabulary.  In R. Barr, M. L. Kamil, P. Mosenthal, & P. D. Pearson (Eds.), The handbook of reading research, Vol. III.  New York:  Longman.
• De Temple, J., & Snow, C. E.  (2004).  Learning words from books.  In A. van Kleeck, S. A. Stahl, and E. B. Bauer (Eds.), On reading books to children (pp. 16-36).  Mahwah, NJ:  Erlbaum.
• Graves, M. F.  (2009).  Teaching individual words:  One size does not fit all.  New York:  Teachers College Press and IRA.
• Graves, M. F., & Silverman, R.  (in press).  Interventions to enhance vocabulary development.  In R. Allington & A. McGill-Franzen (Eds.), Handbook of reading disabilities research.  Mahwah, NY:  Erlbaum.
• Hart, B., & Risley, T. R.  (2003, Spring).  The early catastrophe:  The 30 million word gap.  American Educator, 27 (1), 4-9.
• Hart, B., & Risley, T. R. (1995). Meaningful differences in the everyday experiences of young American children. Baltimore: P. H. Brookes.
• Sales, G. C., & Graves, M. F.  (2009).  Web-based pedagogy for fostering literacy by teaching basic vocabulary.  Information Technology, Education and Society, 9 (2). 5-30.

Academic Families of Words

If we want to promote comprehension we must strive to convey academic vocabulary in every subject area throughout the day, and at every grade level. The specific term academic word does not refer to domain-specific vocabulary like photosynthesis or decimal. An academic word is often the scholarly counterpart to a high-frequency common word. For example, the verb show is a common word but demonstrate is academic. Academic words are often abstract and slippery, not concrete. We encounter academic words less frequently but they are certainly not rare, and furthermore, they appear across subject areas, especially after third grade. Another example is shown in the picture to the left. The word find is academic as used here; students may know that find has the primary meaning of 'locate' but to carry out this task they must also understand its academic denotation. 

In daily conversation, educators can easily insert an academic word for a common word to help students become familiar with it. Slightly and gradually segue to an academic register when speaking and listening. This vocabulary transition might begin in kindergarten:

• You may get obtain a pencil
• It was a bad severe storm
• Let's meet gather, assemble, convene or congregate in the library

Academic words abound in cross-curricular texts and assessments. If unknown, they present a tremendous obstacle to comprehension (RAND Reading Study Group, 2002). Even if students understand the subject matter they can be confounded by scholarly language, as humorously depicted above. Academic words often create a lexical bar, separating the word-savvy from the word-weary and disenfranchised (Corson, 1984). Teachers can help at-risk learners surmount the bar if they persevere together. It's a worthy goal but not quickly met. 

Academic Word List. Research in Applied Linguistics by Averil Coxhead led to the AWL (Academic Word List) of 570 words. These are the most frequently encountered academic words found in texts across disciplines of study in secondary and tertiary school. Each word represents a morphological family of words, so analysis includes analytical, analyze and analyst, for example. Conveying words in families clustered around the same root should promote morphological awareness as well as vocabulary. The AWL has ten sublists ordered by frequency; sublist 1 contains the academic words most frequently encountered. Word families from sublists 1- 5 should apply fairly well to grades 6-8 and sublists 6-10 should apply to high school and beyond. See the good doctor's tips for using the AWL. The AWL may be especially helpful for learning English as a second language because many of these words can be recognized as a Spanish-English cognate (sample cognates). Explore the Spanish Cognates Dictionary from Latin America Links or translate with the the multilingual Woxicon. 

More AWL resources: Visit the University of Nottingham for Sandra Haywood's useful AWL resources, including the AWL Gapmaker, the AWL Highlighter, and the Concordance. These three tools have potential utility for developing and assessing academic vocabulary. From Harvard University, explore Catherine Snow's Word Generation resources for developing academic language. Finally, explore Gerry Luton's AWL exercises and assessments through the the University of Victoria. All of these resources can potentially be used to good effect in a learning atmosphere that includes vocabulary-pertinent peer discussions as well as practice in correctly articulating longer words as modeled by the teacher.

Again, wait not for high waters. Use academic words in primary grade conversations and instructions. Prepare the soil, so to speak. If the children can understand the concept behind the word, they can understand the word. If they can understand make they can understand generate, produce, and create. By all means, speak UP.

Finally, April Fool's Day is just around the corner, but don't let anyone capitalize on your credulity. Don't credit everything you hear! See derivations constructed with the Latin root cred meaning 'to trust, to believe' (more derivations here, see all four pages). I promise, this is no fool's errand; the root cred is worth teaching because most of its derivations are, in fact, (you guessed it) academic words! In fact, Butler et al. (2004) determined that many of the academic words in fifth-grade content-domain texts are derivations, especially with respect to science.  

Click image 2x to enlarge.

PS. I have inserted page 59 from NTC's Dictionary of Latin and Greek Origins (1997, pp. 59-60).  NTC gives cred as the 'common root' of credere and spells it cred. At the bottom of the image I list additional sources naming cred as the root. Many sources, like NTC, include credo, creed, and credenza in the family of words denoting 'believe, trust.' However, perhaps the spelling should be crede (see comments).

References:

• Butler, F. A., Bailey, A. L., Stevens, R., Huang, B., & Lord, C. (2004). Academic English in fifth-grade mathematics, science, and social studies textbooks. CSE report 642. Center for the Study of Evaluation (CSE)/National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing (CRESST). Retrieved 7-2-09 from www.csa.com.
• Corson, D.J. (1984) The lexical bar: Lexical change from 12 to 15 years measured by social class, region and ethnicity. British Educational Research Journal 10(2), 115-133. 
• RAND Reading Study Group. (2002). Reading for understanding: Towards an R & D program in reading comprehension. Santa Monica, CA: RAND.