The 90-Minute Challenge (Dare You!) by Carla Kessler

This post is provided by Carla Kessler, Director of Learning at LogixLab LLC, and creator of Word Lab Web. Formerly a Title I Coordinator and Learning Specialist, Carla has been recognized as an Outstanding Educator by Delta Kappa Gamma Society International. As a 25-year veteran teacher of the middle grades, she has been recognized for her skills in implementing innovative curriculum that brings measurable results. Carla writes, "I have spent my career being a "peaceful warrior" in my efforts to advocate for effective student learning."

_______________

I Dare You!! 

What am I daring you to do? I’m daring you to step back and redesign your teaching priorities for a whole month. I’m talking about putting less time into close reading and reading strategies and putting more time into highly focused word learning. For one month (Jan. 31 to Mar. 3), spend 90 minutes a week teaching vocabulary in your classroom. I’m challenging you to create a classroom environment where your students’ appreciation of word knowledge is heightened more than usual. 

I dare you to allocate 90+ minutes a week 

for direct instruction of word learning

for one month. 

Why? 

Because, “…correlations between vocabulary size and life chances are as firm as any correlations in educational research….there’s no better index to accumulated knowledge and general competence than the size of a person’s vocabulary.” (Hirsch, A Wealth of Words)

Because, “…vocabulary size is a convenient proxy for a whole range of educational attainments and abilities—not just skill in reading, writing, listening, and speaking but also general knowledge of science, history, and the arts.”  (Hirsch, A Wealth of Words)

Because as Marzano keeps reminding us, “The importance of direct vocabulary instruction cannot be overstated.” 

Because, "The number of words that students need to learn is exceedingly large; on average students should add 2,000 to 3,000 new words a year to their reading vocabularies" (Beck, McKeown & Kucan, 2002). 

Because, ”The key to increasing upward mobility is expanding vocabulary.” (Carter, How improving Vocabulary Helps Human Flourishing)

Because, “Vocabulary is critical to an active imagination. A child’s ability to imagine things beyond their own senses is directly related to the depth and breadth of their vocabulary.” (Clarkson, Speaking of Imagination)

I can keep going...but you get the idea. 

During my tenure as Title I coordinator, I found teachers reluctant to give up reading-teaching time in order to make time for more vocabulary study. They had to reduce the teaching of reading strategies to make time. There is very little evidence that teaching a multitude of reading strategies improves reading but our teachers had become quite attached to the reading strategies protocols. 

We asked teachers to “just try it” for a while (just like I am asking you now) and see how it went. From there we were able to create a dialogue about prioritizing and what the research says. We changed our focus and started making much greater gains in reading scores. 

Join us in this challenge. Let's create a dialogue. During the challenge month, I will be sending encouragement in the way of research and ideas. At the end, everyone is asked to share their experiences. My hope is that this experience and subsequent dialogue will also give your students a lift in their reading scores and confidence. 

Guidelines for meeting this 90-Minute Challenge:

DO: 

1. Have your middle grade students pick words they don’t know from the context of what they are reading. Paired reading is one way to do this (see VOCABUTRIX for more ideas). 
2. Provide a common word list, that represents the expectations for word learning for your particular group and/or subject area. 
3. Provide personalized structured approaches for dealing with words in challenging texts (see Worder Nerds). 
4. Have students look up words on their phones, on tablets, or on computers. If you’re worried about using cell phones in class, see the tip below. 
5. Have students discuss aloud with their peers their personal connections to any aspect of the word that they have looked up. 
6. Have students discuss different contexts for the words they are learning and the “feeling” the words elicit based on their personal experience (connotations).
7. Do have students review their favorite new words, expecting that the exposure created by sharing personal connections will help the learning stick.

DON’T: 

1. Give everyone the same weekly word list with no opportunities for differentiation.
2. Avoid challenging texts for struggling readers. 
3. Expect students to learn vocabulary primarily via the dictionary.
4. Spend time memorizing rote definitions, without context. 
5. Assess progress by testing word knowledge independent of context. 
6. Feel obligated to teach every aspect of a word’s meaning (see We Don’t Know Words from Adam).

Tip: Cell Phones and Digital Dictionaries: 
Teaching your students dictionary skills is important but should not be required for learning word meanings. What’s important here is to get to a valid definition quickly. If students are allowed to use phones, have them download a dictionary app. Once downloaded, students can put the phone in “airplane” mode. A digital dictionary is of course also accessible from a tablet or computer. Once students can quickly look up words on digital devices, they often make it a habit, and what a great habit to encourage! 

So what do you think? Can you join us? We will help you along the way with tips, inspirations, and motivational support. For a month, January 31 to March 3, prioritize 90 minutes a week for vocabulary growth. Sign up or simply learn more at my webpage on Wordlab:The 90-Minute Challenge. 

Oh, and before you go, tell us in the comments area about any roadblocks to spending 90 minutes a week on word learning. We’d like to hear from you!

Selecting Words: An Important Consideration in Explicit Vocabulary Instruction (Fisher & Frey)

This post is courtesy of Drs. Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey. Doug and Nancy are professors at San Diego State University and nationally known for their work with vocabulary and comprehension instruction. Visit their website. They are the co-authors of several professional books for educators, including Word Wise and Content Rich: Five Essential Steps to Teaching Academic Vocabulary.  Key ideas from their book are discussed in this post. In two weeks, Nancy and Doug will post again, elaborating on how to teach vocabulary effectively.

There are a number of instructional components required for students to really learn words. It’s not simply a matter of assigning words, having students define those words, and then testing them on the words. Rather, the evidence suggests that students need explicit instruction in word meanings, repeated exposure to words, opportunities for wide reading, and experiences using the words in the presence of their peers (e.g., Fisher, Blachowicz, & Watts-Taffe, 2011; Graves, 2006).

One of the most difficult aspects of quality vocabulary instruction is deciding which words are worthy of being taught. There are clearly defined categories for words, which have become part of the lexicon for vocabulary researchers and teachers. We are all familiar with Tier 1 or general words, Tier 2 or specialized words, and Tier 3 or technical words (Beck, McKeown, & Kucan, 2002; Vacca & Vacca, 2007). These categories have guided teachers in the selection of words and facilitated an understanding of the value in learning different kinds of words.

While these categorical systems are helpful, they don’t provide teachers with concrete information about selecting words to teach. To address this, we have attempted to create a series of questions that teachers can ask to determine which words are worthy of being taught. We drew on several well-known vocabulary researchers, including Graves (2006), Hiebert and Kamil (2005), and Nagy (1988) to name the six categories useful in identify which words to teach. Figure 1 contains our questions, organized in six categories: Representative, Repeatable, Transportable, Contextual analysis, Structural analysis, and Cognitive load.

Considerations for Selecting Vocabulary Words

Topic	Questions to Ask
Representative	Is the word representative of a family of words that students should know? Is the concept represented by the word critical to understanding the text? Is the word a label for an idea that students need to know? Does the word represent an idea that is essential for understanding another concept?
Repeatability	Will the word be used again in this text?  If so, does the word occur often enough to be redundant? Will the word be used again during the school year?
Transportable	Will the word be used in group discussions? Will the word be used in writing tasks? Will the word be used in other content or subject areas?
Contextual Analysis	Can students use context clues to determine the correct or intended meaning of the word without instruction?
Structural Analysis	Can students use structural analysis to determine the correct or intended meaning of the word without instruction?
Cognitive Load	Have I identified too many words for students to successfully integrate?

Figure 1. Considerations for Selecting Vocabulary Words (Fisher & Fry, 2008)

In our teaching, we have found these categories and questions useful. For example, during a recent unit on disability as part of our integrated health curriculum, we used this system to analyze a primary source document that students were going to read in class as part of their Internet Reciprocal Teaching task. From the article about Phenylketonuria (PKU), we selected condition, inherited, gene, enzyme, recessive, and treatable, based on our knowledge of our students and their existing word knowledge. In doing so, we were able to ensure that students understood these key terms, and thus the information about this disability.

Once the words have been selected, instruction begins. There are a host of great ideas about teaching vocabulary on this blog and in a number of other published resources. To our thinking, these are less helpful if we are not clear about which words need to be taught. Having said that, even selecting words worthy of being taught will be useless if we revert to the “assign, define, test” approach to building students’ knowledge.

In sum, selecting words should be foundational in explicit vocabulary instruction, and there should be instruction!

Editorial Note: For a discussion of The Academic Word List, containing morphological families of scholarly words for older students and English Language Learners, see Academic Families of Words. One might apply Fisher and Frey's six considerations to the words in the list, to determine suitability for instruction. For helping students develop conceptual knowledge of words that meet Fisher and Frey's representative condition, read Kathleen Lord's post. For a discussion of essential words for younger students in primary grades and beginning English Language Learners, see prior posts (and books) by Michael Graves and Andrew Biemiller. For a discussion of how to understand words through structural analysis--the fifth consideration suggested by Fisher and Frey--see Morphology (MA) and follow the embedded links to specific posts concerning morphology (e.g., Bellomo, Bowers, Ebbers, Eddy, Filippini, and Henry).

References:

Beck, I. L., McKeown, M. G., & Kucan, L. (2002). Bring words to life: Robust vocabulary instruction. New York: Guilford.

Fisher, P. J., Blachowicz, C. L. Z., & Watts-Taffe, S. (2011). Vocabulary instruction: Three contemporary issues. In D. Lapp & D. Fisher (Eds.), Handbook of research on teaching the English language arts (3rd ed.) (pp. 252-257). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Fisher, D., & Frey, N. (2008). Word wise and content rich: Five essential steps to teaching academic vocabulary. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Graves, M. F. (2006). The vocabulary book: Learning & instruction. New York: Teachers College.

Hiebert, E. H., & Kamil, M. L. (Eds.). (2005). Teaching and learning vocabulary: Bringing research to practice. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Nagy, W. E. (1988). Teaching vocabulary to improve reading comprehension. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English.

Vacca, R. T., & Vacca, J. A. (2007). Content area reading: Literacy and learning across the curriculum (9th ed.). Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mike Graves, Pa ai Beach

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

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

I look forward to your comments and suggestions. 

Mike Graves

References:

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

Academic Families of Words

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Click image 2x to enlarge.

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

References:

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

Vocabulary for Preschoolers: The Martha Speaks Program (Biemiller)

This post is courtesy of Dr. Andrew Biemiller, Professor Emeritus, University of Toronto. Andy is an eminent vocabulary researcher and the author of Words Worth Teaching: Closing the Vocabulary Gap (see references). For more about his research and his book on words worthy of instructional time in elementary grades, also see the post by Michael Graves.

By the end of the primary grades, English-speaking children with the weakest vocabularies (lowest 25%) are already four years behind those with the largest vocabularies (highest 25%).1  English Language Learners are often even further behind. What can be done to reduce this “gap”? 

Clearly, schools could do more.  The gap widens during the primary grades.  Little vocabulary is taught in kindergarten, grade one, or grade two.  I know, teachers will assure me that they teach a lot of vocabulary.  Maybe 50 or 100 word meanings.  But each year disadvantaged children need to acquire 300 or 400 more meanings than “average” English speaking children.  At present, they usually acquire 300 or 400 fewer meanings in the primary grades! Until now, primary grade educators have left vocabulary development to parents.  So middle class parents have provided lots of language in the normal course of living at home.  Less advantaged homes have provided a lot less.2 

One support for less advantaged children could be television.  Children watch a lot of television.  But to teach vocabulary, we have to do more than assume children will acquire words from exposure.

WGBH in Boston has developed a program intended to support vocabulary development.  They adopted Susan Meddaugh’s books about Martha—a talking dog.  These books provide both good stories and many opportunities to explain needed words.  There are six books about Martha.  The television program incorporates these stories and adds many more.  The series is now in its second year on PBS television, and third year of production.  I am an advisor to this program. 

The series has drawn a wide audience, mainly of children ages 3 to 7.  Research to date has shown that children learn words from the Martha Speaks shows at about the same rate as they learn words from stories read in school—without vocabulary instruction.  In other words, children acquire the meanings of about 10% of the words explained.  This is not as high as we would hope for, but is a lot better than having no story experience, which many children experience.

At present, we are hoping to increase the rate of word learning by highlighting words explained.  We are also hoping that teachers might reinforce some of the vocabulary addressed in the program.  WGBH has created a video for teachers on ways of doing this.

A lot of children need to learn a lot more vocabulary.  Past research in classrooms shows that most of these children can learn more vocabulary from meaningful texts.   We have a pretty good idea what vocabulary is needed.3  Now I’m hoping that parents, teachers, and Martha Speaks will all contribute to better vocabulary growth!

For videos and background on the television program, see the Martha Speaks web site. Visit this link for parent and teacher materials. Also, note the series of short videos called “The Experts Speak".

1  Biemiller, A. (2005). Size and sequence in vocabulary development: Implications for choosing words for primary grade vocabulary instruction.  In A. Hiebert. & M. Kamil,  (Eds.), Teaching and learning vocabulary: Bringing research to practice  (pp 223-242).   Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. 

2  Hart, B., & Risley, T. (1995).  Meaningful differences in the everyday experience of young American children.  Baltimore, MD: Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co. 

3  One good listing of needed words is in my book, Words Worth Teaching, available from SRA/McGraw-Hill:  Biemiller, A. (2009).  Words worth teaching: Closing the vocabulary gap.  Columbus, OH:  SRA/McGraw-Hill.