Vocabulary via Images — A Heyday!

post updated 1-20-2026

Halfway into the first month of the new year. Hope it’s been happy enough. As for me, I have been exploring Amadine, an art app for doodling around on my iPad, and reading e-books. (Love the George Cross mystery series by Tim Sullivan.) I rarely read a paperback anymore, as that world is fading away. For better or worse, this is the digital age.

It’s for the better as far as teaching vocabulary goes, because with the internet, pictures are more readily available than ever before, greatly expanding the teacher’s toolbox. Digital technology can greatly assist learners with special needs.  Never before has it been so easy to find the perfect picture to convey a concept and build vocabulary. It takes only seconds to search! Granted, some images in cyberspace are AI slop, but that can be interesting, too, and we can use AI-based programs to modify any image as needed for the lesson. 

As a starting point or introduction, pictures are a great word-learning resource for all students. This also applies to learning a second language (posted here by Cárdenas-Hagan). Keep in mind, pictures are not only for children. Studies with older students show that learning, memory, and attention/ interest are boosted by illustrations, with some important caveats (James & Son, 2020; Khafidhoh & Carolina, 2019). Also, for teaching many new concepts, a picture is useful but certainly not sufficient alone. Andy Biemiller has made a study of differentiating between word types and when the types are learned (2024). In recent conversation, he states “my strong suspicion is that verbally-defined word meanings require a lot more effort and instruction than perceptual/procedural/functional meanings.” (January 2026).

There are many ways to use pictures for teaching vocabulary. Learners can sort pictures, find their own illustrations to match a given prompt, generate images with Ai apps, create their own illustrations “ from scratch” in layers, or generate a picture dictionary. Create images with crayons, even! Results of a recent study suggest that drawing images that convey emotional words such as despair, relief, and frustration might promote memory of such abstract words (Tran & Fernandes, 2023). Is there a learning difference when drawing pictures by hand versus drawing on the computer, with an art program? 

This mountain goat caught my eye. I purchased this  photograph at a Big Sky art fair from a local artist (Brooke Kapalka at K3 Photography). The image is intriguing and could illustrate various concepts: A new beginning for this frolicsome fellow — maybe a happy new year. Off with the old, on with the new. It looks like the fur is about to fly. Nothing like a picture to teach concepts. One relevant word is molting, defined as shedding fur, feathers, scales, or skin.  A kind of transformation, almost a metamorphosis. Other words come to mind also: frolic, leap, gambol. More scientifically, mammal, bovidae, nanny goat, billy goat, ruminant. Chew on that.

References:

Bates, J. & Son, J. (2020). English vocabulary learning with simplified pictures. TESL-EJ, 24(3), 1-20. https://tesl-ej.org/wordpress/issues/volume24/ej95/ej95a12/ 

Biemiller, A. (2024). Word meaning types acquired before vs. after age 5: implications for education. Front. Psychol. 15:1280568. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1280568

Khafidhoh, K., & Carolina, A. (2019). Using pictures for teaching vocabulary to the junior high school students. English Language Teaching Educational Journal, 2(1), 32–38. 

Tran, S. H. N., & Fernandes, M. A. (2023). Drawing enhances memory for emotional words. Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology / Revue canadienne de psychologie expérimentale, 77(4), 296–307. https://doi.org/10.1037/cep0000319

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.

Modeling Word Solving (Frey & Fisher)

This post is courtesy of Drs. Nancy Frey and Douglas Fisher, professors at San Diego State University. Visit their website. They are the co-authors of several professional books for educators, including In a Reading State of Mind: Brain Research, Teacher Modeling, and Comprehension Instruction. Key ideas from their book are discussed below, where Nancy and Doug describe how to model "word solving" so students might learn to infer word meaning when reading independently. This entry builds on the previous post by Fisher and Frey, describing how to decide which words to teach.

Although selecting words worthy of being taught is one of the hardest things about explicit vocabulary instruction, modeling is one of the most underutilized instructional routines for ensuring students’ progress in word knowledge and word solving. Modeling word solving strategies does not focus on specific words, but rather the skills of figuring out unknown words. It’s habit building and students need to develop this habit if they are going to apply what we have taught them on their own.

Our thinking about modeling word solving focuses on students learning to look inside words and outside words for clues about meaning.

And we say this to them all of the time, “Let’s look inside the word and outside the word to see what we know.” That’s what we hope that they start to say to themselves, over time, as they come to words they don’t know.

In thinking about word solving, we have identified three categories worthy of attention during modeling: word parts, context clues, and resources (Fisher, Frey, & Lapp, 2008). Of course, modeling word solving should be integrated with other attempts at understanding the text, such as comprehension strategies and using text structures and text features. We are not suggesting that teachers focus only on modeling word solving, but rather add word solving in their shared readings and think alouds so that students have access to examples of expert thinking about words. As we will see in the examples below, modeling requires the use of an “I statement” in which the teacher shares his or her thinking with others.

Looking Inside: Word Parts

When readers come to an unknown word, one of the things that they can do is look inside the word to see if there are any clues to the word’s meaning. Understanding morphology, including prefixes, suffixes, roots, bases, and cognates, helps the reader make an educated guess about an unknown word. For example, if the reader has never been exposed to the word paleozoology, she or he can make an educated guess about this field using knowledge about prefixes and suffixes. In fact, the word is fairly easy to figure out when you remember that paleo- means old or ancient, zoo relates to animals, and -ology relates to the study of something.

But simply providing students with a morphology list is not likely to change their behavior when they come to unknown words. Instead, teachers need to model the use of morphology in understanding words. For example, while reading a sentence that contained the word heterozygous, the biology teacher modeled his use of morphology saying, “I know that hetero means different, so this must be the one that has two different alleles, or different versions, of a specific gene.”

Of course, morphology does not always work and students should be provided with examples that remind them to check other clues as well. Our favorite example of this occurred in an English as a Second Language classroom when the teacher got to the word repeat. She said, “I got this one. I know that re- means to do again. So I’m going to peat again. Wait, I have no idea what that means! I better check the context clues and look outside the word to see if I can figure this out.”

Looking Outside: Context Clues

In addition to looking inside words, students have to be taught to look outside of words to figure out their meaning. This happens through an understanding of context clues. Although context clues are not infallible, they can be helpful. There are a number of different kinds of context clues, such as embedded synonyms, antonyms, direct definitions, and the use of punctuation. Again, students need to be taught how to use these tools. Modeling provides students examples that can be built into habits.

For example, when reading about the “supermoon” predicted for March 19, 2011, the teacher noted the word fatalities in the news report. There had been quite a bit of news coverage around the world that this astronomical event, which brought the Moon into close range of the Earth, would cause widespread flooding and earthquakes. She made the connection between fatalities in the beginning of the sentence and the use of “the number dead” later in the sentence. Another example occurred when the teacher modeled using punctuation, in this case a dependent clause that contained additional and specific information about a more difficult word. As with word parts, teachers should also model when the use of context clues fail.

Again, the goal is for students to develop a habit that they can use independently when they come across unknown words. Like most of the systems we use when reading and trying to make meaning, they don’t always work. When these two systems--word parts and context clues--fail, it’s time to look further outside the word and use resources.

Looking Further Outside: Using Resources

“When all else fails, look it up” is a common motto of teachers, and with good reason. When the systems we have for figuring out unknown words within a the text do not help, it’s time to turn our attention to the resources we have at our disposal. Once upon a time, that was limited to printed dictionaries and glossaries. Today, we have a plethora of resources at our fingertips because of the Internet. For example, the visual dictionary is a great resource that student can be taught to use. The same holds for the many specialized dictionaries such as:

• Science: TSD: The Science Dictionary

• History: Babylon.com: History Dictionary

• Mathematics: A Maths Dictionary for Kids

• Art: Artlex Art Dictionary

• Sports and fitness: Babylon.com: Sports Dictionary

As with word parts and context clues, teachers should model their use of resources such as these as well as the appropriate ways to ask other people. This can be as simple as calling a friend on the classroom phone or texting someone for more information.

Modeling is an important part of explicit vocabulary instruction, but it is not sufficient in and of itself to ensure that students learn words deeply. In addition to modeling, students need intentional instruction and multiple opportunities to practice the words they are learning.

Editorial Note: To see how Frey and Fisher's "word solving" fits into the third of four components of a comprehensive vocabulary plan (Graves, 2006), read Four-Ply Vocabulary Plan.  To read about the problem with relying only on context clues to infer word meaning, read Context: Good News and Bad. To see another example of using morpheme clues and context clues to infer meaning and solve unknown words, see the portage example embedded in English: A Large Language. To see how the strategy discussed by Frey and Fisher applies to English Language Learners, see The Mindful Zen of Morphology. Also, for Spanish-strong language learners, see A Morphological Approach for English Language Learners by Carolyn Eddy. Finally, to see how to teach morphological reasoning in a deductive approach that prompts critical thinking, see the prior post by Peter Bowers.


References

Fisher, D., Frey, N., & Lapp, D. (2008). In a reading state of mind: Brain research, teacher modeling, and comprehension instruction. Newark, DE: International Reading Association.

Making the Most of Web 2.0 Tools to Support Students’ Generative Vocabulary Learning (Castek)

Jill Castek is a post-doctoral scholar with the Seeds of Science/Roots of Reading project at the Lawrence Hall of Science, University of California, Berkeley where she develops and researches integrated science and literacy curricula. Jill is a literacy specialist with a decade of experience working with striving and struggling readers in grades K-12, especially students who are learning English. Her classroom-based research examines the challenges and opportunities for reading, writing, and learning on the Internet and explores the contexts and conditions through which the new literacies of online reading comprehension are acquired.

Jim Baumann (University of Missouri) and Ed Kame’enui (University of Oregon) are editing a second edition of Vocabulary Instruction: Research to Practice (Guilford Press) to be published in 2011. Bridget Dalton (Vanderbilt University), Dana Grisham (National University) and I were invited to submit a piece that addressed special topics in vocabulary instruction.  In our chapter, Using Multimedia to Support Students’ Generative Vocabulary Learning (Castek, Dalton, & Grisham, in process) we suggest that the use of digital media in vocabulary learning should not only be receptive (e.g., viewing vocabulary graphics), but also generative (actively engaging students in using language and media to express themselves and to create products that represent their new knowledge). We assert that this type of vocabulary learning empowers students as agents of their own learning. The act of creation supports ownership, introduces authentic reasons for learning, and tangibly links reading, writing, and communication in ways that mirror learning outside of school. This post draws ideas from the chapter and suggests ways to promote students’ active word learning using Web 2.0 tools. In this post, I discuss three ways to utilize digital media to enhance word knowledge. 

Vocabulary Videos: Today’s students have grown up with YouTube as part of daily life. Consider having students’ produce their own vocabulary videos (or ‘vocab vids’) -- 60-second videos that situate word learning in a specific context.  The varied student-created examples found at VocabAhead (e.g., the entry for amble and the entry for headstrong) illustrate how video creation and multimodal expression make the word learning experience more memorable for both the video producers as well as the viewing audience. For tips and tools for creating videos, see the teacher page at VocabAhead.

Vocab vids illustrate how meaning can be communicated in 60 seconds or less, with few or no props. Bridget Dalton and a teacher colleague partnered to create a model that illustrates the power of video to illustrate word meanings (see Figure 1, below). Using a flip camera, they shot a video illustrating the word overwhelmed. The video opens with a shot of a desk piled high with books. The teacher is sitting on the floor, hidden by the desk. Suddenly, his hand appears, pulling a book off. More books disappear as the teacher pops up repeatedly, looking increasingly distressed. At the end, the teacher appears with a sign displaying the word overwhelm, saying, “I’m distressed, drowning in a deluge of books. This is an overwhelming amount of books to read! Can you tell I’m feeling totally overwhelmed?!” Note that all of the italicized words were found during a Web search the pair did to prepare for the video. They used different forms of the word (overwhelm, overwhelmed, overwhelming) and incorporated related words (distress and deluge) to aid in the development of concepts. The strategic embedding of a word into a web of multimodal meaning helps make the word learning experience more memorable for both the video producers and the viewing audience.

 Figure 1: Vocab Vid
iIllustrating overwhelmed. 








Simulate Twitter to Promote Target Word Usage: Today’s widespread twitter phenomenon tells us something important about language use and engagement. In 140 characters or less, information about “what’s happening now” can be shared instantly with an online community. The defining characteristics of a ‘tweet’ are brevity, timeliness, and the ability to instantly respond to others. Without actually creating twitter accounts, educators can bring twitter-like experiences into the classroom to expand vocabulary learning. 

To model a vocabulary related twitter, provide a target word or concept and challenge students to keep a related stream of tweets going as long as they can. Set the expectation that both target words and related words must to be used in each post. Provide a context such as a breaking news event, a topic you’re studying in class, or a book you are reading. To simulate twitter in a closed environment, try Wallwisher. Once the topic themed-wall is set up, this free online application does not require individuals to login and everyone can post together in a shared space. Like tweets, comment space is limited (Wallwisher allows 160 characters). 

The following interchange may serve as a tangible example. Imagine reading and watching online news reports about an oil rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico. Students could then create a twitter- like stream to express reactions and questions, using the target words pollution and disaster. Before beginning, discuss the words’ meanings. Then talk through a few examples, as follows.

Twitter-like stream

Student 1: Bad news. An oil rig blew up in the Gulf of Mexico. Pollution is going to be a problem.

Student 2: Oil will pollute the beaches. What a disaster!

Student 3: You can’t swim in polluted water.

Student 4: The seagulls and pelicans will be hurt by the oil. It gets on their feathers.

Twitter-like stream (examining the news event from the perspective of different stakeholders)

Shrimper: Major disaster. Oil rig blew and oil gushing in Gulf of Mexico. Pollution might wipe us out.

Oysterman: What about oyster beds? I have to fish. Polluted oyster beds mean no oysters. What a disaster for me and my customers.

Beach lover: Gulf Shores beach has black oil washing up. Seagulls coated. Can’t swim in polluted water.

Clean up crew: Dish detergent is the best thing to clean oil pollution from birds. Who knew?!!

Oil company: The faster we cap the oil rig, the faster the pollution stops. 

Have Fun with New Slang: The dynamic and inventive nature of language is dramatically evident in the torrent of new words we manage to create each year. While we all may feel the need to chillax (calm down and relax) in the face of students’ often unconventional vocabulary use, seize the opportunity to build word curiosity and playfulness. Two excellent Internet resources for learning about words and language are the Visual Thesaurus and the Oxford Dictionary of English. The latter posts a list each year of new words added to the dictionary. Another excellent resource is the Cambridge Advanced Learners Dictionary.  Also, at Wordspy, Paul McFedries tracks published neologisms (new word creations, many of which are slang and/or linguistic blends). 

Technology and media can play an important role in developing students’ vocabulary through generative, multimodal expression. Giving students experience with the digital technologies required in the 21st century will be motivational as well as academically beneficial. 

References
Castek, J., Dalton, B., & Grisham, D. (in process). Using multimedia to support students’ generative vocabulary learning. In J. Baumann and E. Kame’enui (Eds.) Vocabulary Instruction: Research to Practice (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Guilford Press.

Infer: Make Bricks WITH Straw! (video)

Hirsch (2006) describes a knowledge deficit in rich and poor alike, yet most severe in impoverished conditions. This deficit is troubling because knowledge facilitates comprehension and cognitive processing (Willingham, 2006). The good news? With informational reading materials educators can promote content knowledge and vocabulary simultaneously (earlier post). 

For example, consider the second-grade book pictured left, part of the Seeds of Science/Roots of Reading curriculum discussed in a prior post. I display a primary text because educational psychologists like Neitzel, Alexander, and Johnson (2008) have demonstrated that young children eagerly absorb new content, manifesting burgeoning interest along with a verbal and academic advantage over peers not comparably enriched by engaging content. By exploring interesting yet readable texts, including digital materials, students can further their facility with decoding, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. They potentially become both word savvy and world savvy even as they develop interest in a specific topic.  

Topic knowledge is essential to inference and inference is essential to comprehension. Readers are almost always required to draw an inference, connecting what they know with what was written to make sense of what was NOT written. Authors omit information, assuming the reader will "get it" but if we have frail or faulty knowledge of the topic we cannot easily infer. We cannot make bricks without straw! (To fully understand that figurative expression prior knowledge was required.)

In the videoTeaching Content Is Teaching Reading, Daniel Willingham, cognitive scientist, illustrates the process of inference. Be sure to note the baseball study and the stats on time not dedicated to subject matter inquiry in primary grades. Credit the source as www.danielwillingham.com (video references here.). To further explore the topic, read Willingham's Washington Post blog entry about comprehension strategies. Willingham describes why strategy research is conducted more readily than content knowledge research, thus influencing reading curriculum. 



Morphological note: The word infer contains the prefix in- meaning 'in' plus the Latin root fer meaning 'to bear, to carry.' Thus, to infer is to carry input into one's mental schema and merge it with one's knowledge, perceptions, and experiences, thereby drawing a conclusion. Explore more words with the root fer at this site, included in Vocabulogic's Useful Links (in page footer), labeled Affixes (and some roots).
 
Happy spring!

References:

• Hirsch, E.D., Jr. (2006). The knowledge deficit: Closing the shocking education gap for American children. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
• Willingham, D. T. (2006, Spring). How knowledge helps: It speeds and strengthens reading comprehension, learning—and thinking. American Educator, 30-37.
• Neitzel, C., Alexander, J. M., & Johnson, K. E. (2008). Children's early interest-based activities in the home and subsequent information contributions and pursuits in kindergarten. Journal of Educational Psychology, 100(4), 782-797. 

Mindful Zen of Morphology

Years ago, as a particularly bitter winter retreated from Wisconsin, my mother pointed to a tree near the window. “See the buds on the branch, Susie.” I searched, the two of us peering together through the glass, until finally I saw something that resembled unpopped popcorn. Small, knobby, not much of a muchness. Mom then explained that the tree had been sleeping all winter and now it was awake, putting out buds, making new leaves. I knew she was pleased at these small signs of spring so I decided to be pleased too, even though I was distracted by the notion of a sleeping tree. Years later, in grade school, we learned the scientific term that describes trees at rest, dormant. It was easy to grasp the new term because I already understood the concept.

I am learning to look as closely at words as I once did at that branch. When I peer into the word dormant I think to myself, “Look more closely. Make a connection.” Eureka! Awareness makes all the difference. Immediately dormitory springs to mind. I slept in a dorm room and dormant means 'sleeping, inactive.' Then I think of those charming little dormer windows often found in a sleeping loft. Suddenly the French nursery song Frère Jacques plays through my memory. Dormez-vouz? (Are you sleeping, Brother John?) Dormez-vouz!! It’s a discovery! And a discovery is always interesting. Awaken young minds to the delight of discovering word relationships. All teachers can prompt the mindful Zen of morphology. No need to be a linguist. Just be curious.

Awaken older minds, too. Somehow I became fairly comfortable with French in high school yet never made the connection between dormez-vous, dormant, and dormitory until years later when I began to actively seek associations in English and beyond. Then, voila! Like blossoms in springtime, they’re everywhere.

Robertson's compendium provides many more derivatives of the root dorm. By checking Woxicon I learn that the words for 'sleep' in French, Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese contain the root dorm. This fact makes cross-linguistic transfer possible (see list of websites for teaching ELL, in the page footer).

Bring out the books! Help students become mindful of morphology when they read. Teach them to apply morphemic analysis in context. Consider this excerpt from Chapter 7, Alice in Wonderland, a book rich with word play (full text here). Prompt awareness with a question like this, "Why do you think the rodent is called a dormouse?"

`They were learning to draw,' the Dormouse went on, yawning and rubbing its eyes, for it was getting very sleepy....The Dormouse had closed its eyes by this time, and was going off into a doze; but, on being pinched by the Hatter, it woke up again with a little shriek, and went on...." (Lewis Carroll, 1865).

A dormouse hibernates. This may be a blended compound word. OED Online suggests dormouse flows from French dormir, 'to sleep'  and the Middle English word for 'mouse' but the origins are obscure (see comments). Children are unlikely to readily assume that dormouse contains dorm, because it looks like dor + mouse and sounds like door + mouse.  But most students have more knowledge than they realize. The teacher's job is to draw such knowledge to the surface, from dormancy into metacognition. 

And we can always count on Rowling for wordplay with Greek and Latin. I especially liked the Hogwarts coat of arms (Wikipedia/Creative Commons/Jakovche). The school motto states Draco Dormiens Nunquam Titillandus: Never tickle a sleeping dragon. A joyous discovery!

PS. The Vernal Equinox is Saturday, March 20, heralding the first day of spring. During an equinox the night is nearly as long as the day, almost 12 hours each. The meaning is in the morphemes. The Latin root equi refers to 'same or equal' as in equality, equity, equate, equator, etc. The root nox means 'night.'

To study words like equinox we need context but context comes in many forms. Pictures provide a platform for discussion and are especially helpful for English Language Learners. I saw a creative portrayal of an equinox in student-created calendar art, published by Buffalo Public Schools. How would you depict the concept?

That's all, folks. My thanks to Jessica Fresco for capturing her spring blooms on film and sharing them with us.

Phonemes & Morphemes for ALL (Filippini)

Dr. Alexis Filippini contributed the following post. Alexis is assistant professor in the Department of Special Education at San Francisco State University.

Dyslexia, the most prevalent specific learning disability, is typically characterized by phonological processing deficits that contribute to difficulty decoding (reading) and encoding (spelling), and slow, inaccurate reading (Lyon, Shaywitz, & Shaywitz, 2003). In particular, matching printed letters to their sounds and vice-versa may be inconsistent, difficult, and frustrating – leaving rich, robust thoughts trapped on a page or stuck in a mind. 

Typically, these difficulties are “unexpected” relative to other cognitive abilities (Lyon et al.).  Many individuals with dyslexia also have strengths in listening comprehension and vocabulary knowledge, although these strengths may be underdeveloped due to limitations in reading and therefore limited exposure to reading age-appropriate material.

Most individuals with learning disabilities, including dyslexia, benefit from high-quality instruction in cognitive strategies, such as comprehension monitoring (e.g., Baker, Gersten, & Scanlon, 2002). For students with dyslexia in particular, high quality instruction focuses on remediating phonological awareness and print-speech mapping (e.g., Vadasay, Sanders, & Peyton, 2006). The focus on cognitive strategies is broadly applicable across the K-12 span and beyond as individuals move into the workplace and college. The systematic, explicit instruction on phonological awareness and cracking the speech-print code is highly effective at remediation for most children. For example, Torgeson’s 2000 review of early interventions reported that the incidence of reading failure was reduced from 18% to 1.4-5.4%. However, for students beyond the primary grades, instructional emphasis on skills that typically develop by eight years old can be tedious, inefficient, and perceived as “baby stuff.”

How do we provide explicit instruction to support phonological processing weaknesses for students who read well below grade level while also supporting them in age-appropriate content knowledge, described in an earlier post as essential to comprehension?

The kind of vocabulary instruction highlighted throughout Vocabulogic, I argue, provides an efficient solution to this challenge. Vocabulary instruction that targets development of word consciousness and generative word knowledge makes use of activities for a wide range of ages that support content-area knowledge (see David Pearson’s post). Simultaneously, we sneak in explicit instruction in word structure. How?

In general, many of the same instructional methods that have proven effective for “good” readers have also proven effective for “poor” readers (Blachowicz & Fisher, 2000). We know that effective vocabulary instruction provides multiple exposures to words in multiple contexts, with multiple opportunities to respond, applicable also to students learning English as a second language (e.g., Carlo, August, & Snow, 2005; McLaughlin et al., 2000). Interestingly, these three angles are effective for supporting learning in general for students with LD!

We also know that structural analysis that attends to morphemes is effective in learning new vocabulary, deciphering novel vocabulary, and in making connections among novel and exciting words (see Reed, 2008 for a review). Taking apart and examining “big” words, those fun multisyllabic science words, such as pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis, is absolutely age-appropriate for adolescents, supports access to content area knowledge, and …. drum roll please … gives students opportunities to use phonological awareness and to practice decoding in an authentic, useful way. In fact, these kinds of metalinguistic skills are also great candidates for explicit strategy instruction. 

For example, using morphological analysis plus context clues to make strategies for deciphering unknown word meanings transparent, or using semantic maps and semantic feature analysis to make relationships among words explicit have been very effective for learners with LD (see Bos & Anders, 1990; Carnine & Carnine, 2004; Lubliner & Smetana, 2005). See prior post describing morphemic analysis in context.

Plus, there are some bonuses to rich and robust vocabulary instruction. Depending on the nature of the disability and many contextual factors, these learners may arrive in your classroom with a vocabulary that far exceeds their reading and writing skills or one that is impoverished from years of limited access to sophisticated texts. The first case provides a strong foundation to build on, and the second presents a significant need that is often ignored in our enthusiasm for remediating decoding and fluency skills.    

Finally, instructional research in the area of learning disabilities suggests some additional strategies that would enrich vocabulary learning for typical readers as well. Encouraging oral vocabulary and listening comprehension development through teacher read-alouds and books on tape, and providing more opportunities for bypassing encoding and decoding difficulties such as text-speech software and speech-text software can make vocabulary instruction and development even more robust. Look for future blog posts on these topics!
 
Baker, S., Gersten, R., & Scanlon, D. (2002). Procedural Facilitators and Cognitive Strategies: Tools for Unraveling the Mysteries of Comprehension and the Writing Process, and for Providing Meaningful Access to the General Curriculum. Learning Disabilities Research & Practice, 17(1), 65-77. 
Blachowicz, C. L. Z., & Fisher, P. (2000). Vocabulary Instruction. In M. L. Kamil, P. B. Mosenthal, P. D. Pearson & R. Barr (Eds.), Handbook of Reading Research (Vol. 3, pp. 503-524). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
 
Bos, C. S., & Anders, P. L. (1990). Effects of interactive vocabulary instruction on the vocabulary learning and reading comprehension of junior-high learning disabled students. Learning Disability Quarterly, 13, 31-42.
 
Carlo, M., August, D., & Snow, C. E. (2005). Sustained vocabulary-learning strategy instruction for English-language learners. In E. H. Hiebert & M. L. Kamil (Eds.), Teaching and Learning Vocabulary (pp. 115-136).
 
Carnine, L., & Carnine, D. (2004). The interaction of reading skills and science content knowledge when teaching struggling secondary students. Reading & Writing Quarterly, 20, 203-218.
 
Lubliner, S., & Smetana, L. (2005). The effects of comprehensive vocabulary instruction on Title I students' metacognitive word-learning skills and reading comprehension. Journal of Literacy Research, 37(2), 163-200.
 
Lyon, G. R., Shaywitz, S. E., & Shaywitz, B. A. (2003). Defining dyslexia, comorbidity, teachers' knowledge of language and reading: A definition of dyslexia. Annals of Dyslexia, 53.
 
McLaughlin, B., August, D., Snow, C., Carlo, M., Dressler, C., White, C., Lively, T. J., & Lippman, D. N. (2000). Vocabulary improvement and reading in English language learners: An intervention study. In A Research Symposium on High Standards in Reading for Students from Diverse Language Groups: Research, Practice, & Policy (pp. 129-143). Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education.
 
Reed, D. K. (2008). A synthesis of morphology interventions and effects on reading outcomes for students in grades K-12. Learning Disabilities Research and Practice, 23(1), 36-49.
 
Torgesen, J. K. (2000). Individual differences in response to early interventions in reading: The lingering problem of treatment resisters. Learning Disabilities Research & Practice, 15(1), 55-64.
 
Vadasay, P. F., Sanders, E. A., & Peyton, J. A. (2006). Code-oriented instruction for kindergarten students at risk for reading difficulties: A randomized field trial with paraeducator implementers. Journal of Educational Psychology, 98(3), 508-528.

Content Knowledge & Vocabulary

“Of a truth, Knowledge is power, but it is a power reined by scruple, having a conscience of what must be and what may be; whereas Ignorance is a blind giant who, let him but wax unbound, would make it a sport to seize the pillars that hold up the long-wrought fabric of human good, and turn all the places of joy as dark as a buried Babylon.” (George Eliot, English novelist, 1819-1880).

If we do not already have knowledge of Babylon, Eliot's meaning is not so clear. The Tower of Babel got its name from the ancient city of Babylon and the darkness Eliot speaks of may well be the darkness of confusion and chaos. If knowledge is power, and ignorance not so blissful, let's create classrooms that promote content knowledge along with word knowledge.

If handled properly, word knowledge grows as we actively explore art and science, math and music, history and technology. As David Pearson said in a prior post, "Read it! Write it! Talk it! Do it!" Let the content drive the vocabulary instruction and provide a good deal of context, distributed over time. Build knowledge. Knowledge supports cognition (Willingham, 2006). Knowledge is necessary to comprehension (Kintsch & Rawson, 2007). Embed word learning into knowledge-building activities across content. Word knowledge and content knowledge should eventually merge through intellectually interesting lessons framed around the words (logos) that support the 'study of' the particular science, be it biology, math, or linguistics. The words are the science, in some sense. For instance, how can we discuss the science of meteorology without using the words weather, thermal, pressure, humidity, etc? We can, I suppose, and silence may be a useful device at times, but people will talk, and for that, they need words.

The real question? How do we make word knowledge a major part of content instruction? We do so in varied ways, but we must be deliberate and explicit about it. For example, in art (an important subject area for six reasons, research brief here), when creating these snowpeople with paint and fabric, we might teach the names of the fabrics used in the project. Have the students say and read the word fabric and discuss its basic meaning. Then, have students say and read the various types of fabric: cotton, felt, burlap, silk, wool, velvet, etc. Say and read the texture words, touching the cloth: rough, scratchy, silky, smooth, wrinkly, etc. Describe the patterns: checkered, striped, plaid, etc. Using a model or outline, have students generate a sentence: “My cotton fabric is gold and black in a plaid pattern.” Compare one fabric to another. When the art project is complete, brainstorm potential names or titles for the finished work and discuss why one title is preferred over another. This promotes word consciousness.

In the process of teaching art  we build knowledge, and with it, vocabulary. Did I mention how much fun important art is? For more art ideas tour the entire blog, created by a master teacher in Washington. To facilitate classroom management as well as effective communication habits, be sure to read about his settling time, the seven-minute rule. It should work in any subject area, I think.

Back to the fabric lesson, eventually students will need to make the morphological leap from fabric to fabricate and fabrication. Fabricate means "to make something out of pieces or parts" but it can also mean "to make something up, to concoct an untruth," more euphemistically called a story. The leap from fabric to fabricate ('to lie') is more obvious when we think of this as "to make up a story out of whole cloth." Also, eventually, students need to learn about other ways we use the word fabric, as in the fabric of society, the fabric of the universe, etc. How is fabric used in the quote by Eliot?

Fabric and fabricate are academic terms compared to the more common words cloth and make. In the art lesson described above, students develop artistic ability, acquire academic vocabulary, and gain knowledge of different types of fabrics. Time is in limited supply; our lessons need to accomplish several goals at once. 

References:

Kintsch, W., &  Rawson, K. A. (2007). Comprehension. In M. J. Snowling & C. Hulme (Eds.), The science of reading: A handbook, 2nd edition, (pp. 209-226). Malden, MA: Blackwell publishing.

Willingham, D. T. (2006, Spring). How knowledge helps: It speeds and strengthens reading comprehension, learning—and thinking. American Educator, 30-37.

The Comeback of Words (Pearson)

This post is courtesy of Dr. P. David Pearson.  David is a faculty member in the programs in Language and Literacy and Cognition and Development at the Graduate School of Education at the University of California, Berkeley, where he served as Dean from 2001-2010. Current research projects include Seeds of Science/Roots of Reading -- a Research and Development effort with colleagues at Lawrence Hall of Science in which reading, writing, and language are employed as tools to foster the development of knowledge and inquiry in science--and the Strategic Education Research Partnership (SERP)--a collaboration between UC Berkeley, Stanford, and the SFUSD, designed to embed research within the portfolio of school-based issues and priorities. Across his career, David has earned numerous awards for his contributions to reading research. He is the founding editor of the Handbook of Reading Research, now in its fourth volume.  David taught elementary school in California for several years.

I have been a fan of vocabulary, both as a conceptual/theoretical issue and as an instructional phenomenon, for well over 40 years. I have always loved dictionaries, and thesauruses even more. And I never ceased to be amazed at how easily vocabulary maps onto our conceptual understanding of the world(s) in which we live, both the natural world that surrounds us and the intellectual conceits that we create in our imagined worlds.

I have this vivid recollection of a conversation between me and two ardent whole language advocates in 1977, just a few months after Dale Johnson and I published a book entitled, Teaching Reading Vocabulary, in which we made a case for the explicit teaching of words in several senses and contexts. "How could you publish a book about words?" they complained. "Words don't really exist, except as a convenient orthographic convention. And in writing about words, you encourage teachers to focus on them rather than on the meaning of text." So went  the battle for about two hours (along with a good bottle of Cabernet, as I recall, maybe two!). Neither they nor I changed our positions. They still don't like words, and I do. But it did make me think about why I think vocabulary is so important. And it's because words aren't the point of focusing on words. Meaning is! But words are the convention we have adopted as a species (and words really are a universal component of language) for naming the meanings we wish to point to, highlight, feature, and discuss. And so it is not words for words' sake, but words for the doors of meanings they open for us that really matters.

Click to enlarge

In my own recent work with Gina Cervetti and others at Lawrence Hall of Science at UC Berkeley, we are working on the role of word learning as an instance of the acquisition of conceptual knowledge about science. And that has led us to our own theory of the development of conceptual knowledge/word meaning, shown here. This is slide 55 of Science and Literacy.

The basic idea is that we have to encounter words in many settings in order to "own" it: (a) as a "representation" to pronounce or decode, (b) as a "definitional" entity (where a definition is something like a "summary" of one's word knowledge), (c) as an entity that we meet in a range of oral, written and experiential contexts, (d) as a part of a semantic network of related concepts/words, (d) as a "sign" we use when we DO something in the world (I have learned, in my work on the role of language in hands-on science, that this embodied connection is much more important than I ever thought it might be), and (e) as a label we use when synthesize our knowledge about a topic or an experience. That is the essence of slides 54-55 in the Powerpoint presentation at this link. To that list, if I were revising that slide knowing what I have learned from Susan Ebbers, I would add a morphological setting in-between the definitional and the semantic settings. 

All of these settings are important, none moreso than any other. The simple truth is that when it comes to learning vocabulary, nothing beats exposure and use--in every possible learning modality. In Seeds and Roots, we say, when it comes to learning new vocabulary, Read it! Write it! Talk it! Do it! There is no better--maybe no other--way.

That's all for now.  Thanks, Susan, for giving me a little space in your blog.  Look forward to hearing from lots of you.

David