Leading for Literacy: A Reading Apprenticeship Approach (Book Review)

Drawing from years of research applied to adolescent literacy, Ruth Schoenbach, Cynthia Greenleaf, and Lynn Murphy have recently distilled their experimental results and methodology into a practical resource. Published in December 2016, LEADING FOR LITERACY: A READING APPRENTICESHIP APPROACH is designed for teachers and students in secondary and tertiary school. The authors describe an approach that facilitates an understanding of complex texts in varied disciplines: history, science, math, literature, etc. They begin with the proposition that disciplinary reading is an essential skill.

From the book:

"DISCIPLINARY READING: The reading that middle school, high school, and college teachers assign day after day in class after class—is foundational to students’ success. For anyone in doubt, new academic standards and workforce expectations make the demand for academic literacy emphatically clear. What is less clear is how to support students to achieve that literacy‐based, future‐oriented success. 

For many if not most administrators, teachers, students, and parents, these new expectations may require a paradigm shift in understanding how learning happens best. This shift includes new ways of thinking about the relationship of literacy to subject area content, students’ and teachers’ roles in learning, and, most important, students’ potential for critical thinking and disciplinary reasoning. Change of this depth cannot spread beyond a few classrooms and is not sustainable without system‐level support. 

The Reading Apprenticeship Framework, developed to promote students’ engaged academic literacy, has a solid history of catalyzing this kind of transformative change—for individuals and within institutions."

A note from Emily Wagner at WestEd's Strategic Literacy Institute: 
Low levels of literacy and the inability of students to read complex texts cause millions of middle and high school students to drop out of school or graduate from high school unprepared for the demands of college and work. The recently released Leading for Literacy, written by Ruth Schoenbach, Cynthia Greenleaf, and Lynn Murphy from WestEd’s Strategic Literacy Initiative, is designed to guide superintendents, principals, teacher leaders, and advocates through every step of organizing and promoting a culture of literacy throughout a school or district. 

Leading for Literacy is based on the Reading Apprenticeship approach to learning that broadens teachers’ mindsets about what students are capable of doing, and provides the foundation for apprenticing students to reading, writing, thinking, and speaking in the different disciplines.
 The book features the diverse voices of change agents, including superintendents, principals and teacher leaders. The authors draw upon hundreds of examples and insights, and provide evidence of the applicability of this approach. Along with 42 case study “Close-Ups”—and 43 Team Tools for use in professional development settings, the book offers a rich mix of exposition, rationale, theory, tools, and practice. A companion to the authors’ bestselling Reading for Comprehension (1999, 2012), Leading for Literacy dissects the problems and difficulties as well as presenting successes from different kinds of environments—urban to rural, middle school to college. 

To learn more and dialogue with authors Schoenbach and Greenleaf, register for the webinar Leading for Literacy, March 8th 1:00-2:00 p.m. EST at http://bit.ly/SLI-03-08-17


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My own thoughts:

Having reviewed the book, this method makes sense to me, primarily because it is text-based. Hoorah for that! Students read and discuss the actual text, rather than circumventing the textbook  because it is too complex, too boring, too lengthy, too technical, etc. Rather than merely reading summaries and/or taking notes from a teacher, they read the text. They are taught how to contend with complicated text. This is key. Students and teachers reflect on how they read the text (fluency adjusted for complexity), how they grapple with the vocabulary (including roots and affixes) and how they follow the concepts (comprehension). 

Metacognition is central to this approach, as students reflect on their understanding of the text and on the varied reading processes they used. The metacognitive methods employed in this book encourage students to mark up the margins as they read and to reflect on their understanding, both independently and in groups. They learn to flexibly adjust to the varied texts and writing styles used in different disciplines. Motivation is also integral to this method, including self-efficacy and even interest, to some extent, as a situational interest is sometimes incited by collaborative discussion. Motivation is critical, especially for adolescents struggling to comprehend obscure language and complex concepts. Motivational processes and metacognitive processes are, in some respects, inseparable, as noted in this approach.

In addition, the program makes no pie-in-the-sky promises. In contrast, the authors make it clear that developing literacy across the disciplines will take time (months, even years) and hard work, with a good deal of pre-planning, professional development, and teacher collaboration. This includes vocabulary analysis. This image is from the book Leading for Literacy, page 111. Click the image to enlarge it. This Team Tool is used with teachers in a professional development setting and when they are engaged in lesson design. This tool helps teachers identify obscure vocabulary and plan strategies to promote word learning.

So, I generally like the looks of this book and its Reading Apprenticeship approach. As some of you know, I have taught intervention reading to middle school students and served as a strategic literacy coach to literacy teachers in middle and high school. I found that it was generally easier to teach adolescents how to decode multisyllabic words than it was to teach text-based understanding. It took much longer — and required a very different approach — to develop vocabulary knowledge and to promote comprehension. I was challenged by the enormous task, yet I strove to help students gain the confidence and competence to skillfully use the tools and strategies needed for close reading. I would have been eager to try a program like this one. Once basic decoding / phonics patterns are understood reasonably well, this approach is a logical next step. 

Plus, happily enough, the Reading Apprenticeship method does consistently encourage students to approach new vocabulary through roots and affixes. While the word morphemes is not used in the book, the method clearly encourages students to utilize knowledge of morphemes and innate morphological processing to understand words they encounter while reading. Through this method, I would expect students to deepen their morphological awareness even as they learn to grapple with complex texts. The screenshot from the book, shown below, is only a slice of the student-learning goals the authors developed for each discipline. This screenshot is excerpted from the history goals, but a similar word-analysis goal is seen across disciplines:

This method should augment and consolidate a prior or ongoing supplemental focus on morphology. This apprenticeship method should be effective, especially if students recognize basic decoding patterns, including common phonograms, and have already studied, or are currently learning, the more frequently encountered Greek and Latin roots and affixes. 

I'd give it a go, especially if I had the support of the colleagues in my professional community.

Best regards,

Susan Ebbers

See another post on Disciplinary Literacy by Dr. Zygouris-Coe.

What is Disciplinary Literacy and Why Aren’t We Talking More About it? (Zygouris-Coe)

In this post, Dr. Vicky Zygouris-Coe discusses theory and offers practical applications for helping older students develop disciplinary literacy. Vassiliki ("Vicky") Zygouris-Coe is an Associate Professor of Education at the University of Central Florida, College of Education. Her research focuses in literacy in the content areas, online learning, and teacher professional development. Dr. Zygouris-Coe has impacted reading instruction in the state of Florida through the Florida Online Reading Professional Development project—Florida’s first online large-scale project for preK-12 educators. Her work has been published in a variety of professional journals. She serves in several editorial roles, including Co-Editor of Literacy Research and Instruction, Associate Editor of both the Florida Educational Leadership and the Florida Association of Teacher Educators Journal.

What is Disciplinary Literacy?

Shanahan and Shanahan (2008, 2012) propose that disciplinary literacy, advanced (and specialized) literacy instruction embedded within content-area classes such as math, science, and social studies, should be a core focus of literacy efforts for middle and high school grades. Disciplinary literacy “involves the use of reading, reasoning, investigating, speaking, and writing required to learn and form complex content knowledge appropriate to a particular discipline” (McConachie & Petrosky, 2010, p. 16). According to this perspective, definitions of literacy in the secondary grades must be anchored in the specifics of individual disciplines. Disciplinary literacy highlights the complexity, literacy demands, and differentiated thinking, skills, and strategies that characterize each discipline.

Disciplinary literacy is built on the premise that each subject area or discipline has a discourse community with its own language, texts, and ways of knowing, doing, and communicating within a discipline (O’Brien, Moje, & Stewart, 2001). It moves beyond the notion of “every teacher is a reading teacher” and literacy as an “add-on” set of generic strategies used to improve the reading and writing of subject area texts. Rather, it situates literacy as an integral part of content (Moje, 2008) so that “literacy within the discipline” becomes the goal of disciplinary literacy.” (Zygouris-Coe, 2012, p. 4)

Findings from the Shanahan and Shanahan (2008) study suggest that each discipline (e.g. history, chemistry, mathematics) carries different cognitive and literacy demands. Participants in Shanahan’s and Shanahan’s (2008) study varied in the way the read, in what they considered to be challenges in the text, and in how the texts should be taught. For example, comprehension can be challenging with mathematics when text is extremely dense and students need to understand the flow of information from print to numeracy, to graphs. Vocabulary can be challenging in chemistry due to extensive technical vocabulary in the discipline. Whereas in history, vocabulary can be challenging due to the many dated words and metaphorical terms. In terms of discipline-specific strategies, for example, sourcing, contextualizing, identifying arguments and how the author portrays events, etc. are useful to history. In chemistry, separating essential from non-essential information, visualizing, and thinking of examples are some of the strategies that fit the content demands. Lastly, explaining concepts, writing equations, and illustrating data are some of the strategies that would help students read and comprehend text in mathematics.

Some of the challenges we are facing with preparing students to succeed in disciplinary literacy include literacy professionals’ lack of knowledge of each discipline to be able to provide teachers with specific tools to teach students the kinds of knowledge, literacies, language, and inquiry different experts (e.g., mathematics, science, history) use. In addition, content area teachers lack knowledge in the literacy demands of their discipline. As a result, we have many adolescents who cannot read and comprehend text in different disciplines—we must prepare teachers to develop students’ discipline-specific knowledge and skills (Lee & Spratley, 2010; Moje, 2008; Shanahan & Shanahan, 2008; Snow & Moje, 2010). As educators, we need to develop our knowledge of the unique structure, goals, practices, texts, and discourse of each discipline and how knowledge is created and shared (Fang, 2004; Fang & Schleppegrell, 2008; Geisler, 1994; Halliday, 1998; Schleppegrell, 2004).

Why Aren’t We Talking More About Disciplinary Literacy?

We are living in the midst of high accountability and educational reform. The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) have been adopted by most states and will be implemented in 2014. The CCSS call for literacy within each discipline, for critical thinking of complex texts, for complex knowledge development, and for evidence-based reading, writing, and speaking. Disciplinary literacy tasks are situated within the CCSS. So, why aren’t we talking more about disciplinary literacy efforts or initiatives in secondary pre-service teacher preparation and in-service teacher education?
Shanahan and Shanahan (2012) discuss the existing mixed perspectives about what literacy in the content areas should look like. In addition, they highlight that disciplinary literacy is not a new term for reading across the content areas. Disciplinary literacy refers to the knowledge, discourse, and habits of mind necessary for learning in each discipline (McConachie & Petrosky, 2010); it is not just about a set of strategies for reading and writing across the disciplines. Also, vocabulary learning is not about using core effective strategies to help students memorize or make connections among concepts; there are unique discipline differences that we should take into consideration in each subject area. Students need to learn the scientific vocabulary of each discipline and specific tools to develop and analyze it—they need to learn (and use) the language of each discipline, its grammar, patterns, and uses.

In my opinion, there should be more discussion among educators and researchers about disciplinary literacy, more learning about it in professional learning communities (PLCs), and planning for instruction that would meet both the content and literacy demands of each discipline. We need to get away from using generic strategies that only help students organize text and focus on helping students learn how to think, read, talk, write, communicate, and inquire in ways that are consistent to each discipline. This paradigm shift from generic to discipline-specific literacy would help bring about the development of content, literacy, and thinking skills we have been longing to see in our adolescents’ learning. Of course, this shift would require a different way of teaching and learning in secondary content area classrooms and schools and a different approach to teacher preparation and professional development. We need more dialogue, research, collaborations, and direction on this topic. In the following section, I will focus on one aspect of the disciplinary learning framework, that of accountable talk (McConachie & Petrosky, 2010).

Accountable Talk to Support Disciplinary Literacy Learning

We know from research that students learn best when they are actively involved in their own learning. How can teachers maintain student engagement in, and facilitate ownership of, learning? One way they can do it is through modeling, promoting, and facilitating accountable talk in each content area. Accountable talk is an important component of a disciplinary literacy-learning framework (McConachie & Petrosky, 2010). It is talk that supports the development of student reasoning and their ability to verbalize their thinking (Michaels, O’Connor, Hall, & Resnick, 2002). Accountable talk is talk that reflects student understanding of words and concepts read or discussed in class, participation in co-construction of meaning, and monitoring of meaning as it is “molded” from student to student in class. Accountable talk is respectful of everyone’s ideas. Everyone is expected to participate actively in discussions, listen attentively, and expand on ideas. In addition, everyone is accountable to knowledge building, to providing sufficient evidence for assertions, and to rigorous thinking. According to this type of talk, everyone is “accountable” to the development of meaning “by all and for all.”

Accountable talk will help teachers to “revoice” students’ comments and prompt them to provide additional support for their assertions. It will also help teachers to provide further insight into student knowledge and use higher-level vocabulary while still maintaining contact with student ideas. Students will benefit from teacher modeling, feedback, scaffolded support, and a positive and collaborative learning classroom environment.

Here are some basic examples of accountable talk.

• I have something to say about…
• I agree with ______ because…
• I disagree with _______ because…
• I wondered about…
• Is this your main point?
• Can you prove that …?
• I have a question for _______ about…
• Could you repeat what _______ said?
• Could you say more about that?
• Do you agree or disagree with what ________ said? Explain your thinking.
• Could you give us an example?
• Could you elaborate more on the meaning of this word?
• Do you agree or disagree with _________ statement?

Accountable talk will vary according to content area as a result of each discipline’s structure, goals, ways of thinking and learning, vocabulary, and texts. For more information on discipline-specific examples of accountable talk, please see Figure 1.

Figure 1. Examples of accountable talk in four disciplines. This figure illustrates sample discipline-specific questions that can promote student engagement, use of specialized vocabulary, and learning in each discipline.

Conclusion

Disciplinary literacy includes the use of reading, thinking, speaking, inquiring, and writing required to learn and develop complex content knowledge appropriate to a particular discipline (McConachie & Petrosky, 2010); it is not about a set of generic tools transplanted into the discipline to improve reading and writing of content-specific texts (Moje, 2008; Shanahan, 2012). A focus on disciplinary literacy will help students develop content knowledge and critical literacy thinking skills needed for success in school, college, and career.

Resources

To learn more about disciplinary literacy, please examine the following resources.

1. Dr. Timothy Shanahan’s blog: Shanahan on literacy.
2. Topics in Language Disorders (January/March, 2012). Themed Issue on Disciplinary Literacy.
3. University of Pittsburg, Institute for Learning.

References

• Fang, Z. (2004). Scientific literacy: A functional linguistic perspective. Science Education, 89, 335–347. 
• Fang, Z., & Schleppegrell, M. (2008). Reading in secondary content areas: A language-based pedagogy. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.
• Geisler, C. (1994). Academic literacy and the nature of expertise: Reading, writing, and knowing in academic philosophy. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
• Halliday, M. A. K. (1998). Things and relations: Regrammaticising experience as technical knowledge. In J. R. Martin & R. Veel (Eds.), Reading science: Critical and functional perspectives on discourses of science (pp. 185–235). London, UK: Routledge.
• Lee, C. D., & Spratley, A. (2010). Reading in the disciplines: The challenges of adolescent literacy. New York, NY: Carnegie Corporation of New York.
• McConachie, S. M., & Petrosky, A. R. (2010). Content matters: A disciplinary literacy approach to improving student learning. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
• Michaels, S., O’Connor, M. C., Hall, M. W, & Resnick, L. B. (2002). Accountable talk: Classroom conversation that works. (Version 2.1). [Online resource]. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh.
• Moje, E. B. (2008). Foregrounding the disciplines in secondary literacy teaching and learning: A call for change. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 52(2), 96-107.
• Schleppegrell, M. J. (2004). The language of schooling: A funcilinguistics perspective. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
• Shanahan, T., & Shanahan, C. (2008). Teaching disciplinary literacy to adolescents: Rethinking content-area literacy. Harvard Educational Review, 78(1), 40-59.
• Shanahan, T., & Shanahan, C. (2012).What is disciplinary literacy and why does it matter? Topics in Language Disorders, 32(1), 7–18.
• Snow, C. E., & Moje, E. B. (2010). What is adolescent literacy? Why is everyone talking about it now? Phi Delta Kappan, 91(6), 66-69.
• Zygouris-Coe, V. (2012). Disciplinary literacy and the common core state standards. Topics in Language Disorders, 32(1), 35-50.

Concept Sorts and Vocabulary Learning (Bear)

This post is courtesy of Dr. Donald R. Bear. Donald is a professor and the director of the E. L. Cord Foundation Center for Learning and Literacy in the Department of Educational Specialties at the University of Nevada, Reno. He is author of numerous articles and books, including Words Their Way, Words Their Way with English Learners, and Vocabulary Their Way. Donald began his career as a teacher and still enjoys working with schoolchildren of all ages. He is interested in literacy and language across a culturally diverse population.

Thanks, Susan, for your gracious invitation to share ideas. My post is about concept sorts, an activity in which students sort words or pictures into conceptual categories. Concept sorts are valued as a way to organize ideas, support interaction and discussion, document activity, and assess thinking and basic word and vocabulary knowledge (Neuman, & Dwyer, 2009; Templeton, et al., 2008).

In the following examples, I share three word study activities, and then I suggest fundamental steps in developing concept sorts. Vocabulogic already provides a tremendous collection of activities and resources that are concept sorts in their own ways! I am glad to contribute to the discussion.

The Osani Game, Figurative Expressions of Roundness

My students and I found this game in a greeting card with a photograph of 20 children sitting feet-to-feet in a circle (see www.connectingdotz.com). Enchanting! According to the literature, Ehé children from central Africa play the Osani game by calling out a figurative expression of roundness. Two expressions of roundess given were the cycle of the moon, and the circle of family. One person is left in the circle when everyone else can no longer think of a figurative expression of roundness. In this game, the last child left was said to “live a long and prosperous life.” Ahh, the wonders of a winning vocabulary!

Click to enlarge / download.

In a class I taught, we brainstormed a few more examples and then split into small groups and reported back. I’m interested in what would happen with your students. Our brainstorming is documented in the chart to the right (click to enlarge or download).

The Osani Circle Game reminds me of the ways vocabulary and thinking intertwine. Concept sorts are all around us, as in the ways we put our groceries away, and they are integral to learning and thinking. We sort in our personal collections and we sort at our jobs. For good and bad, we are always sorting; for examples see Things Organized Neatly.

In our teaching, how can we ensure that there is sufficient intensity and frequency of exposure for concept and vocabulary learning? Concept sorts promote verbal expression and thinking. Teachers need myriad ways to promote frequent and engaging activities.

Picture and Object Concept Sorts

Emergent and beginning readers will need pictures or objects for their concept sorts. By design, picture concept sorts do not require reading or a common oral language; we find that the pictures support students as they talk about their sorts with their classmates (Helman, et al., 2012). Karen Carpenter (2010), a former student now at Coker College, studies how kindergarten students sort pictures conceptually for vocabulary learning. In a delayed recall task, students who sorted learned twice as many new words as students in the comparison group who only listened to stories on the topic (Carpenter, 2010). Tops and Bottoms was one of the read-aloud books that was followed with concept sorting (Stevens, 1995). The rich storybook language of this book provided the foundation for the students to contrast concepts such as harvest/plant and yank/toss as well as launch a scientific observation into how to classify the parts of a plant.


Carpenter, like Jamie Oliver who brought cooking to the classroom, found that students were unfamiliar with many of the vegetables or parts of plants. In Tops and Bottoms, a rabbit tricks a bear into thinking that he wants the tops of a vegetable when he should choose the bottoms (carrots), and the bottoms when he should choose tops (lettuce). Students were shown how to sort pictures by their parts (roots, flowers, stems, trees, branches). The sort included some of the same vocabulary as Tops and Bottoms; see the photo. Teachers demonstrated the sorts, and then students sorted and discussed their sorts with classmates on their own. Together, sorting and story sharing make for a richer experience than a read aloud alone.

Concept Sorts in the Content Areas

Concept sorts are an active way to examine key vocabulary in particular areas of study, and to introduce and organize concepts and examples. The initial sort is a base for adding other words to the sort. The sorts are created on a sorting template and students sort the words or pictures and discuss the categories. Concept sorts encourage hierarchical thinking with the most basic categories representing Power I level words (Flanigan, et al., 2011).

Here are the basic directions in creating a content, concept sort: a.) Choose the key concepts and vocabulary from the chapter. These words are often the bolded words. In textbooks, key concepts are often displayed hierarchically in webs, overviews, and maps. b) Think of two or three ways words can be sorted. The fundamental contrast is one of “those that fit and those that do not” (Bear, et al., 2012). c) Create a sorting grid; 8” x 3” sorts with 24 words are common, though the sort in Figure 3 has 12 rows. d) Prepare the sorting schedule.

Recently, I developed a concept sort for a diverse group of fifth graders, diverse in languages and special services. Students who at first could not read the words, were more comfortable saying and reading the words after sorting and talking about the key vocabulary. The fifth graders were beginning to study the Pre-Revolutionary War in American History. Some words were conceptually related to British/American distinction, so this presented three columns: words related to British, American, or Other. This Other column is for words that don’t fit or that are part of another concept.

When we sorted together students were able to hear the words, and they practiced the sort with a partner and discussed the sort in a small group. The table below shows how the words looked on a sorting template with the underlined words British and American, serving as Power Level I words, the words used as categories for sorting.

In this sort, the idea of representation comes up often. We talked about what represent means, and brainstormed related words. We also took representation apart. By taking off suffixes and prefixes, we made the meaning connections among word parts (re-, present). A beginning transitional reader with severe reading difficulties could not read this word, but was able to talk about the concept, and by the end of this lesson had made a strong start in recognizing represent and related words even though these words were quite difficult for him to read.

Students need numerous opportunities to sort and discuss the categories of the sorts. Sorting repeatedly and with support increases the intensity of exposure to new words and concepts. Predictably, student engagement can increase when there are disagreements in sorting. In this sort, there was some disagreement whether or not loyalists is a British or American term.

Pre-Revolutionary War Concept Sort
Three ways to sort the concepts below: 1) places, people, concepts; 2) British contrasted to Americans; 3) open sort
British American Britain no taxes without representation against revolution America Governed by king for revolution Colonist Parliament	Prime minister King George III Virginia elected officials loyalists New York no representation liberty representation “Join or die”	13 colonies pro taxation ruled by king self-government against taxation against being ruled by king monarchy freedom colonists Patrick Henry

(Editorial note: For more on developing an understanding of abstract concepts, including concepts pertaining to Pre-Revolutionary War, see post by Kathleen Lord.)

Sorting and Assessment

Sorts provide formative assessments of reading, vocabulary, and concept knowledge. In order to assess students’ ability to read the words, you may begin by having students read the words aloud when they sort. Students also identify difficult words to read or understand. If students have difficulty reading more than half of the words then consider other ways to support the concept sort- with pictures, and partner sorting.

The ways students sort and describe their sorting is a way to learn what students know about a topic. Do they get the sort? In open sorts, do they develop sorts that are on target? Can they contribute other examples? In what ways do they reflect on the rationale for their sorts? How do these reflections change over the course of the unit of study?

Procedures for Concept Sorts

These principles of sorting are central to establishing sorting routines in the classroom.

1. Demonstrate sorts; establish sorting categories, model the sort, and have students practice. On another day, repeat the demonstration and have students sort and check with you to observe.
2. Model the process of sorting repeatedly until you are confident that students know how to sort, talk about their sorts, and have a repertoire of a few basic word study routines and activities, like how to record sorts in a vocabulary or word study notebook, and then to look for examples in word hunts.
3. Develop a 4- or 5-day routine for sorting and schedule independent and small group activities for the week.
4. Move to e-sorts whenever possible. Students do enjoy interactive white board speed sorts.
5. Extend sorts with vocabulary activities that include charting, and looking deeply at a few words. Etymological references online can be an important resource. We list several (Bear, et al., 2012).
6. Vocabulary notebooks have areas tabbed for content areas in science, social studies, readings in English, and mathematics with symbols, terms, and equations. These areas can become electronic areas and include games like Concentration or board games.
7. Have students write reflections in which they answer the question: Why did you sort the way you did?

This is where I log off and wish you a month of sorting and thinking with your students. Maybe you will play the Osani game and brainstorm examples of roundness with your students.

With best regards,

Donald 

Selected References

• Bear, D. R., Helman, L., & Woessner, L. (2009). Word study assessment and instruction with English learners in a second grade classroom: Bending with students’ growth. In J. Coppola and E. V. Primas (Eds.) One classroom, many learners: Best literacy practices for today’s multilingual classrooms (pp. 11-40). Newark, DE: International Reading Association.
• Bear, D. R., Invernizzi, M., & Templeton, S., & Johnston, F. (2012). Words their way: Word study for phonics, vocabulary, and spelling instruction, 5th edition. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
• Bear, D. R., Smith, R. (2009). The literacy development of English learners: What do we know about each student’s literacy development? In Helman, L. A. (Ed.) Literacy development and instruction of English learners (pp. 87 - 116). New York: Guilford Press.
• Capenter, K. (November, 2010). The Relationships among Concept Sorts, Storybook Reading, Language-Based Print Awareness, and Language Proficiency in the Vocabulary Learning of Diverse Kindergarten Children. Doctoral dissertation, University of Nevada, Reno.
• Caravolas, M. (2006). Learning to spell in different languages: How orthographic variables might affect early literacy. In R. M. Joshi & P. G. Aaron (Eds.), Handbook of orthography and literacy (pp. 497-511). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
• Flanigan, K., Hayes, T., Templeton, S., Bear, D. R., Invernizzi, M., Johnston, F. (2011). Words their way with struggling readers, 4 – 12. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.
• Helman, L. A. (2005). Using literacy assessment results to improve teaching for English-language learners. The Reading Teacher, 58, 668-677.
• Helman, L. A., Bear, D. R., Templeton, S., Invernizzi, M. & Johnston, F. (2012). Words their way with English learners: Word study for phonics, vocabulary and spelling instruction, 2nd edition. Boston; Allyn & Bacon.
• Henderson, E. H. (1981). Learning to read and spell: The child’s knowledge of words. DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois Press.
• Invernizzi, M. & Hayes, L. (2004). Developmental-spelling research: A systematic imperative. Reading Research Quarterly, 39, 216-228.
• Neuman, S. B., & Dwyer, J. (2009). Missing in action: Vocabulary instruction in pre-k. The Reading Teacher, 62(5), 384-392.
• Stevens, J. (1995). Tops and bottoms. San Diego, CA: Harcourt.
• Templeton, S., Bear, D.R., Invernizzi, M., Johnston, F. (2009). Vocabulary their way. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

Building Prior Knowledge of Concepts (Lord)

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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)

Google Ngrams for All: Exploring Word Use in Current and Historic Publications

Christmas Greetings! I hope you are making merry, because according to the Ngrams graphed below, the English culture as a whole may be losing its grasp on joy, at least as evidenced by how often, relative to other words, the words happy, glad, and merry have appeared in print in the last 200 years.

Needless to say, I am making a gross assumption, doing exactly what we must not do when interpreting these data, but perhaps I have caught your attention? 

I created this graph with a wondrous new analytic tool: Google Books Ngram Viewer. Google has amassed the world’s largest digitized collection of books, almost 5.2 million scanned books (but it still represents only about 4% of existing publications). Google Labs, working with Erez Lieberman Aiden and Jean-Baptiste Michel, doctoral students from Harvard University, made the dataset freely accessible to the public (only the dataset, not the books). Google continues to scan books to add to the corpus.

In a recent issue of Science (2010), Jean-Baptiste Michel et al. describe their work as "culturomics." Michel et al. state, "Analysis of this corpus enables us to investigate cultural trends quantitatively. We survey the vast terrain of "culturomics," focusing on linguistic and cultural phenomena that were reflected in the English language between 1800 and 2000." But in a recent Language Log post, Berkeley linguist Geoffrey Nunberg discusses both the constraints and the strengths of what he calls "the largest corpus ever assembled for social science and humanities research." (See also his article in the Chronicle of Higher Education.)  The Ngram Viewer is a powerful tool, but without access to supporting information, interpret results loosely.

This tool is certainly motivating, triggering interest. For instance, I was curious about the evolving forms of the compound word songbird, so I created the graph below, plugging in the comma-separated terms songbird and song bird (my first attempt also included the hyphenated form song-bird but hyphens are problematic). I set the smoothing value to 10, thus allowing for 21 years of moving averages, and the date range from 1800-2000. The graph shows that the closed form, songbird, and the open form, song bird, competed for favor, with the closed form eventually taking a sweeping lead.

Teachers might use this tool occasionally. Consider the term imperialism. It often occurs with colonialism. These concepts are distinct yet overlapping. The graph below depicts a relationship between colony and empire (smoothing is set at 7). Students could annotate graphs with pertinent events and related words, possibly using a Smart Board or Promethian. I created the colonialism Wordle (full size here) with text from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. (See prior post describing Wordle.)

By clicking on the hyperlinks, listed below the graph, one can see snippets from actual scanned books, sorted by date. Below is a sample snippet. Notice how the word says is spelled fays. In archaic documents, an s (called Long s) often looked like an f, without the horizontal stroke. Google's program did not make the translation, from f to s.

The history of the colony of Massachuset's Bay: from the first ...

He gave the name also to Martha's Vineyard. t This I suppose is what Josselyn, and no other author, calls the £rst colony of Newr-Plimouth, for he fays it...

Back to the graph, the output percentage, on the y-axis, is the relative frequency of the word—relative to total words published that year. I use the term words loosely--words are case sensitive in this corpus, so meal and Meal are not the same (but then again, how often would a sentence begin with the singular, Meal?).

There is more to learn: Google Labs describes how to interpret the output and the smoothing function.  View nine descriptive sample graphs.  Scroll through a collection of public-made Ngrams (you could add your own to the site). Read the New York Times. See Scientific American. Read the post and comments at Language hat (dot com). Explore culturomics.org. 

Create your own graph. Type in a single word or several words, separated by a comma. It might be interesting to explore the shifting forms or spellings of your own name, or any other famous personage. One can also search for phrases, such as middle of the night, midnight or House of Lords, House of Commons. To share your discovery, right-click on your graph and click "copy image location." Then, paste the copied link into an email or website, or save the URL, to find your graph again on the Web. Enjoy!

Warm wishes for a peaceful and productive new year.
Susan

Preschool: Where the Wild Words Are (Paulson)

Lucy Hart Paulson, Ed.D., CCC-SLP, is a communication specialist for young children. She is on the faculty of the Communicative Sciences and Disorders Department at The University of Montana, sharing responsibilities for teaching, supervising, research, and outreach. Lucy provides professional development for a variety of audiences and is the lead author of the Early Childhood Language Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling (EC LETRS), Building Early Literacy and Language Skills, a resource and activity guide for young children, and  Good Talking Words, a social communication skills program for preschool and kindergarten.

Children’s books are one of the most valuable resources for developing and expanding language and early literacy skills in preschool and in primary grades. Using thematic units revolving around a central storybook is an effective strategy in early childhood education settings. Storybooks are read repeatedly during the thematic unit time period. With multiple readings, children have many valuable opportunities to learn unfamiliar words in the context of language, often with the support of wonderful illustrations. These new words, within the language structure of the sentences, give children wonderful exposure to the complexities and nuances of language. 

Children’s books are where the wild, rare, and unfamiliar words are. Check it out for yourself. Analyze your favorite children’s book. Before reading it for the nth time, predict how many words may be unfamiliar to young children, and then predict how many words there are in the longest sentence within the text.

Here are a few of my favorite books. For each book, I provide a summary of unfamiliar vocabulary and the word count per sentence:

Where the Wild Things Are, by Maurice Sendak (1963), is a classic children’s book with a powerful social emotional message. There are more than 20 words that may be unfamiliar to young children including wolf, suit, mischief, vines, private, gnashed, tame, rumpus, start, and lonely. This story has only nine sentences; three have 60 or more words with the longest being 75(!); four have 20 to 30 words; and the two shortest sentences have 9 and 15 words.

The Big Red Barn, a classic story by Margaret Wise Brown (1956), follows animals in rhyming text through their day in the barnyard as they make noises, play, and go to sleep. A quick count results in more than 20 words that may be unfamiliar to young children including great, golden, squeal, weather vane, rustling, and sailed. This story has a few short sentences. However, most of the sentences contain more than 10 words, and four sentences have 20 to 25 words.

Another popular book, especially during spring, is The Very Hungry Caterpillar, by Eric Carle (1969, 1987). Concepts embedded in this pattern story of a caterpillar turning into a butterfly through metamorphosis include size, the days of the week, counting, and wise eating habits. Nearly 20 words may be unfamiliar to young children. Five of the sentences are 6 to 8 words in length, nine of the sentences contain 13-19 words, and the longest sentence is 40 words.

The Mitten, by Jan Brett (1989), is an adapted version of a Ukrainian folktale. This story contains more than 60 potentially unfamiliar words such as discovered, mole, snuffling, jostled, argue, disappeared, attracted, commotion, drowsy, lumbered, bulged, force, scattered, distance, silhouetted, and an abstract meaning of sound. The sentence length ranges from 4 to 36 words but most sentences are longer, comprised of at least 13 words.

Are children capable of comprehending so many unfamiliar words when they listen to a story? Are they able to learn them? Research suggests that not only are children able to learn new words at a surprising rate, exposure to unfamiliar words seems to “prime” their brains for learning more. An interesting phenomenon in young children is called fast mapping (first described by Carey and Bartlett in 1978) in which a young child may be exposed to a new word or concept in one salient instance, or with limited exposure, and can make an educated guess about the meaning within the context. The child is able to create a mental image of that word. In theory, this phenomenon begins during the language development stage when toddlers’ vocabulary seems to explode and continue through the preschool years. By re-reading the same book to children several times, new vocabulary words and related concepts are reinforced in the mental lexicon. (See How to Read to Children to Optimize Word Learning).

In a study conducted in 1988 looking at vocabulary in a variety of print and media contexts, Hayes and Ahrens identified that children’s books contained an average of 30.1 unfamiliar words per 1000. In contrast, educational television programs such as Sesame Street had only two unfamiliar words per 1000. It would be interesting to make a similar comparison today, 20 years later, to see if there have been changes in vocabulary in newer children’s books and if the writers of educational programs are including more complex vocabulary. One television program written with sophisticated vocabulary for young children is the Martha Speaks Program (prior post by Andy Biemiller).

The context is important in learning multiple meanings. For example, in The Mitten, the little boy’s grandmother, Baba, wants to see that he is “safe and sound.” This represents a new meaning for sound, not something heard. Also, Big Red Barn ends with the animals being “sound asleep” which is another meaning for sound, having nothing to do with the sounds animals make.

Using sophisticated storybooks is one of the best opportunities for young children to learn vocabulary and complex sentence structures needed for competent oral language use. An important job for us, as their language guides and facilitators, is to intentionally plan how to use those words to help make children’s learning wild, wonderful, and powerful.

Finally, it is important to read (and re-read) both fiction and nonfiction to young children. Fiction helps children develop story grammar and vocabulary. Nonfiction helps children develop vocabulary and content knowledge—something that becomes increasingly important as children advance in elementary school.

References:

Carey, S., & Bartlett, E. (1978). Acquiring a single new word: Proceedings of the Stanford Child Language. Papers and Reports on Child Language Development 15, 17-29.

Hayes, D. P.,  & Ahrens, M. G. (1988). Vocabulary simplification for children: A special case of “motherese”? Journal of Child Language, 15(2), 395-410.

Previewing Vocabulary (Sedita)

Joan Sedita contributed this post. Joan received her Masters in Reading Education from Harvard University in 1980 and worked at the Landmark School in Massachusetts until 1998 as a teacher, diagnostician, supervisor of tutorials, and high school principal. She was the founder and director of the Landmark College Preparation Program and director of the Landmark Outreach Teacher Training Program. More recently, Joan has consulted with Massachusetts Department of Education, served as a LETRS trainer, developed curriculum for grades 4-12 and founded Keys to Literacy.

Studies have shown that pre-teaching vocabulary can improve comprehension (Laflamme, 1997; Billmeyer & Barton, 1998). Existing background knowledge is a critical component for comprehension, and word meanings are part of larger knowledge structures, or schema about a topic. Previewing the vocabulary words associated with a given topic enables students to connect their background knowledge to what they are listening to or reading. In order to comprehend while reading, a person must be familiar with at least 90 percent of the words in the text (Hirsch, 2003), and previewing also provides familiarity with unknown words. 

The goal of previewing is to:
• Activate prior knowledge;
• Clear up student misconceptions about word meaning;
• Clarify the meaning of known words in relation to the current context, especially for words with multiple meanings; and
• Provide some initial familiarity with unknown words so students can make sense of the text.

Previewing is about attaching some meaning to unfamiliar words rather than deeply teaching them. It is important to provide in-depth instruction for certain key words, but previewing before reading is not the best time to do this. Graves (2006) notes that the goal of previewing is to provide students with just enough knowledge about words so that they do not “stumble” over them while reading. 

What Words Should Be Previewed?
Teachers should preview words that may be unfamiliar to students but essential to understanding the text. Choosing which words to preview will depend on the students in the class, including issues like grade level, vocabulary and background knowledge, and English proficiency. For students in the same grade level reading the same passage, words for previewing may be different from school to school, and even from classroom to classroom. Teachers must, therefore, use common sense, sensitivity, and knowledge about their students to determine which words to preview. Here are some suggestions to help you determine which words to preview (Sedita, 2005):

• Choose words that are necessary to understand the text and the major concepts in the content lesson or unit of study.
• Choose words that are unfamiliar specialized academic words (e.g., metamorphosis, quadrilateral, oligarchy), and non-specialized academic words (e.g., analyze, relationship, synthesize) that are essential to comprehending the topic of the reading.
• Choose words that are unfamiliar to most of the students.
• Include problematic phrases or figurative language.
• Choose words that have unfamiliar multiple meanings. 

How to Preview Words
Historically, previewing has often meant looking up words in the dictionary and copying the definitions. However, this approach does not transfer knowledge about the word into useful ownership by the student, and it often does not provide enough understanding to help make sense of the reading. Frequently, dictionary definitions are confusing, and they do not connect the meaning of the word to the subject matter or the reading context. It is also a boring task that may even turn students off to wanting to learn new words.

The best way to preview words is to spend a limited amount of time providing a basic understanding about the word. Here are some ways to effectively preview vocabulary:

• Provide synonyms and antonyms: Provide words to students that are related to the preview word, either similar in meaning or opposite in meaning.

• Use everyday language to explain the words: Provide user-friendly definitions, especially as the meaning relates to the context of the reading. Based on many years of research and work with teachers on vocabulary instruction, Beck and McKeown (2007) have developed an approach to teaching words that they call “rich” instruction. This approach uses everyday language to explain the meanings of words. Rich instruction suggests the following be used during previewing:

• Introduce words through explanations in everyday connected language rather than dictionary definitions
• Provide several contexts in which the word can be used
• Provide examples, situations, and questions that are interesting
• Encourage students to interact with the word right away by asking them to relate to and talk about the word in some way

• Use discussion: Discussion has been found to be an effective way to learn unfamiliar words (McKeown & Beck, 1988; Carlisle and Katz, 2005). When teachers present unfamiliar words in context and ask students to offer possible meanings, the ensuing discussion improves students’ understanding of words. A simple way to review words on a previewing list is for the teacher to facilitate a whole class discussion about the words or to monitor small collaborative group discussions.

• Use collaborative, small groups: Encourage students to work collaboratively to make connections between the words and to check each other’s understanding of the words. 


Click "Read More" to view references

Word Clouds, Key Concepts and Historic Proclamations

Recently, a blogger sent me a link to Jonathan Feinberg's Wordle website, a free program that transforms raw text into seemingly endless stylized arrangements. Words are sized in proportion to how often they occur in the text.

To create this image of the Declaration of Independence (original text) I set Wordle to display a maximum of 60 words and to ignore common high frequency words (e.g., a, the, and, for). Then, I pressed "Randomize" repeatedly until I saw an arrangement I liked.

Teachers could use this type of word cloud to inform lesson planning, on the premise that recurring words might be important. (Vocabulary Brief offers more details on selecting words worth teaching).

A word cloud might also prompt conversations. Hopefully, peers would discuss patterns in word placement and linkages across words and in doing so would make associations across concepts. A word cloud might help students see the big picture and understand essential ideas. It is a type of concept map.

The Declaration of Independence proclaimed colonial liberty from English rule, and we celebrate this on the Fourth of July, but we need to remember another war and several more proclamations. In Texas especially and increasingly throughout the nation, Juneteenth is a day of celebration commemorating the abolition of slavery. This word appears to be a blend of June and nineteenth, named so because on the 19th of June, 1865, Union soldiers finally reached Galveston, Texas to proclaim the long war over, the slaves free. Imagine the shock, the tears, the jubilee. Note that the message did not reach the Gulf shores until two years after the Emancipation Proclamation. For nearly 150 years, former slaves and their descendants from the Galveston area have kept this day in living memory. On Juneteenth we can also celebrate the adoption and proclamation of the Thirteenth Amendment.

 
Along those lines, another proclamation of sorts: Here are the top 20 words in Lincoln's Gettysburg Address (original text). If I were a history teacher, I could use this Wordle to decide which vocabulary words to pre-teach. We could discuss why Lincoln chose to return again and again to these particular words and why this speech was so effective.

Teachers might also use a word cloud to illustrate the value of word choice, the power of connotations, to foster word consciousness, and to help students monitor repetition in writing samples. Teachers and students might create and publish word clouds from coursework, famous poems, essays, speeches, short stories, etc. Thanks to open source texts (see Project Guttenberg, for example, or Page By Page Books) we can easily copy and paste text into any program that creates clouds. No need to insert the entire text--it can be interesting to see what comes of a few paragraphs.

This free technology is applicable to younger children, too. Readers may know the children's jingle, illustrated below. The riddle is only two sentences, so I did not exclude common English words. Click image to expand. 

Enjoy the day!

Preschool Language Intervention: Part 2 (Cavanaugh)

Today, Christie Cavanaugh, Ph.D. continues her description of a preschool language intervention, providing specific examples and models to encourage rich use of oral language in early childhood. Readers are encouraged to download Christie's slides and use them with educators and parents. For part one, see last week's post.

The reference to incidental teaching in last week’s post reminds us that teaching language to young children should be purposeful, yet accomplished in the context of children’s play or “incidents” of opportunity. Hart and Risley (1975) described incidental teaching in reference to language teaching as a naturally-occurring interaction between a child and adult, usually in the context of free play and that the child-initiated interaction is considered an opportunity for the adult to impact a child’s skill development. Child initiation, adult support, and naturally-occurring situations are fundamental principles that have underscored decades of research in this area related to naturalistic language intervention. 

Incidental language teaching is both implicit and child-centered due to the nature of following children’s leads and using these contexts to determine how to scaffold appropriately and elevate language appropriately. Hence, this approach is also explicit because we plan purposefully to ensure that children have a variety of topics (e.g., theme-based centers to expand background knowledge and experiences) from which to initiate language. We also know development to determine children’s language levels and use this to provide support for elaborating language and providing models of rich vocabulary and sentence structure of increasing complexity. Planning ahead allows us to generate multiple opportunities to use new vocabulary embedded in various contexts to serve as models and prompts for children to integrate new language into their repertoires. Bonnie Raitt’s lyrics, “Let’s give ‘em somethin’ to talk about . . .” resonates with our actions of planning purposefully.

Click slide to enlarge or save/download.

A simple tool for teachers to use as an environmental prompt or cue to assist in modeling efforts is something I’ve labeled as “The Teacher’s Word Wall” (see slide at right).

This word wall serves as a reminder for teachers to use sophisticated language or expressions in place of common, routine comments produced in the child’s environment. The table provides examples of alternate ways to say common expressions, like “Great job” or “thank you.” Because some of these alternatives may not be part of one’s typical vocabulary when conversing with young children, the adults present and talking to young children can easily glance at the word wall and select an option to insert into a comment or dialogue. Over time as the common expressions are replaced with more sophisticated options in a fluent manner, the children will hear them used multiple times and eventually weave them into their speaking vocabulary. The idea is to replace the expressions often to continue building on children’s vocabulary.

Click to enlarge.

An extension of the “Teacher’s Word Wall” includes vocabulary, anchors for conversation or conversation starters, prompts (questions and comments), and actions that relate to a specific theme. This slide relates to a flower shop themed center.”Again, these cues serve as reminders for adults to embed the language into the context of playing with children. 

We do have a strong research base for some very simple, effective strategies. These translate to simple actions: Talk to children, converse, plan for the opportunity for children to use their language, follow children’s leads (but remember to plant a few seeds), model, model, model, prompt (comments and questions), use rich vocabulary, build background knowledge, make connections between words, concepts, and topics.

The personal narrative Susan Ebbers provided in a prior post, describing how her early childhood experience of looking for buds in spring helped her to immediately understand the word dormant several years later, illustrates the importance of early language experiences for building background knowledge and comprehending both oral and written language. Susan was interested and initiated the interaction, her mother followed her lead to use this interaction to provide the oral vocabulary (appropriate support and modeling), and the dialogue on Susan’s initiated topic deepened her understanding. All of this impacted her understanding of related vocabulary and concepts in the written form. This is a very simple, yet powerful example and many like these help us realize that the goal of building children’s oral vocabularies is attainable, but there are many who will rely on us to model and disseminate the simplicity.

Responses are encouraged and appreciated, especially if they include examples to disseminate to early childhood teachers.

References and Resources

• Byrnes, J. P., & Wasik, B. A. Language and literacy development: What educators need to know. New York: Guilford Press.
• Copple, C. & Bredekamp, S. (Eds). (2009). Developmentally appropriate practice in early childhood programs serving children from birth through age 8. Washington, DC: NAEYC.
• Hart, B., & Risley, T. (2003). The early catastrophe: The 30 million word gap. American Educator, 27, 4-9.
• Hart, B., & Risley, T. (1995). Meaningful differences in the everyday experiences of young American children. Baltimore: Brookes.
• Hart, B., & Risley, T. (1975). Incidental teaching of language in the preschool. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 8, 411-420.
• Israel, S. E. (2009). Vocabulary lists and activities for the PreK-2 classroom. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.
• Otto, B. Language development in early childhood (3rd Ed.). Columbus, OH: Merrill.
• Otto, B. (2008). Literacy development in early childhood. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.
• Owens, R. E. (2008). Language development: An introduction (7th Ed). Boston: Allyn and Bacon.
• Soderman, A. K., & Farrell, P. (2008). Creating literacy-rich preschools and kindergartens. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.
• Warren, S. F., & Kaiser, A. P. (1986). Incidental language teaching: A critical review. Journal of Hearing and Speech Disorders, 51, 291-299.