L517: Advanced Study of the Teaching of Secondary School Reading

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Reading Assignment
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Lecture
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Strategies that Help Teach Vocabulary

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Oncourse Activity

Reading Assignment

 
bullet Brozo & Simpson, Chapter 6
bullet Teaching Vocabulary to Adolescents to Improve Comprehension

Lecture

 

When we talk about vocabulary activities, we are talking about something that a teacher engages students in prior to reading. (See the table below.)
STAGE TEACHER'S GOALS
BEFORE READING
bullet Activate students' prior knowledge.
bullet Provide vocabulary instruction if necessary.
bullet Establish one or more specific and explicit purposes for reading.
bullet Motivate students to read.
DURING READING
bullet Provide students with an activity that will allow them to monitor their comprehension in light of the purpose(s) for reading.
AFTER READING
bullet Provide students with the opportunity to assess their own comprehension of the text in light of the purpose(s) for reading.
bullet Extend and elaborate on ideas from the text.

We all have memories (nightmares in some cases) of having weekly vocabulary tests. We would be given a list of words, look them up in the dictionary, write definitions and sentences with them, and then be tested on them at the end of the week.

Part of reading is incorporating new knowledge in with prior knowledge to create our own understanding.

As teachers, we are often good at teaching what words mean, but we often neglect helping students understand the words conceptually. Steven Stahl (1985; as cited in Brozo & Simpson, 1995) distinguished definitional knowledge from contextual understanding. The first means the reader knows a dictionary definition of a word, while the latter means a reader has a well-developed understanding of the word's meaning in a variety of contexts as well as knowledge of how to use it in those contexts. Helping students to gain meaning of words within a context will help them develop contextual understanding.

To help students learn to use new words, Brozo and Simpson (1995) make the following recommendations:
bullet Teach vocabulary in context.
Vocabulary is best taught within a meaningful context. Words taught in context of use (i.e., science terms taught in science) helps students integrate vocabulary with prior knowledge. Words should not be taught in isolation. For example, vocabulary lists that include unrelated words with definitions for students to memorized are likely to be forgotten. 
bullet Use active learning techniques.
Students learn best when they are actively involved in their own learning. Brozo and Simpson recommend the generative process where students recognize relationships among words, apply words to practical use, and recognize examples and non-examples. Contextual analysis can be used to help students understand various meanings of the word.
bullet Give students' tools to expand word knowledge.
Teach students to use their own strategies and tools to learn about words (i.e., dictionary usage, monitoring word use).
bullet Reinforce vocabulary.
If they are important terms in your content area, the only way students are going to remember them after leaving your classroom at the end of the school year is through reinforcement. Reintroduce important vocabulary throughout the year.
bullet Model good vocabulary use.
Teach them strategies you use to learn and remember words. For example, some words can be defined by identifying the meaning of smaller words that make up the word (e.g., "teamwork). Another useful vocabulary strategy is to learn the meaning of common prefixes and suffixes. For example, if students know that "tri" means "three," they will have an easier time defining words like "tripod" and "triangle."

Explicit vocabulary instruction is not always something that needs to happen. It is a judgment call. Ask yourself these questions when deciding whether explicit vocabulary instruction is needed before students begin reading the text:

  1. Is learning new vocabulary a learning objective of the lesson?
  2. Does the text introduce a lot of new vocabulary?
  3. Is it difficult to define a lot of the new vocabulary using contextual clues?
  4. Would comprehending the text be difficult for many of your students if you did not engage them in a vocabulary activity prior to reading?

If the answer to any of these questions is "yes," consider engaging your students in a vocabulary activity to introduce them to the new vocabulary in the text.

Strategies that Help Teach Vocabulary

 

These instructional strategies include elements that assist in providing students with the opportunity to assess comprehension:

 

bullet Concept Cards
bullet DRA
bullet Graphic Organizers
bullet Semantic-Feature Analysis
bullet Word Webs

 
Oncourse Activity

If you have any questions about how to post to Oncourse or what your responsibilities are for posting to Oncourse, please visit the L517 Posting to Oncourse web page.

FINDING THE PERFECT STRATEGY

ORIGINAL POSTING--By the end of the day on Wednesday of this week post your response to the following topic on Oncourse.

Step One: Click here and follow the directions.

Step Two: The text that you just read on cicadas has a readability of 12th grade. There is a lot vocabulary introduced in the text that a 12th grade student would be unfamiliar with. 

Suppose you are a biology teacher and are introducing a unit on insects. This text on cicadas is one of the first texts that students will read. You are going to elicit students' prior knowledge by having them fill out the "before reading" column in the anticipation guide, and then having a class discussion about how students filled that out. You also feel that students would benefit from a vocabulary activity since the text introduces a lot of vocabulary that is new to your students. Another reason you want to do a vocabulary activity is because a lot of the vocabulary in this text is vocabulary that they will see and need to know when reading texts about other insects later in the unit.

BEST VOCABULARY STRATEGY -- Of the five vocabulary strategies above (concept cards, DRA, graphic organizers, semantic-feature analysis, and word webs), which do you think would be the best choice for teaching vocabulary from this text? Why? Post this information on Oncourse.

If you choose...

bullet Concept Cards, indicate for which words students should create concept cards. Give two examples of concept cards that students might create using two of the words you want them to make a card for. (Make one card for each word, for a total of two cards.) You can either create the concept cards and post them on Oncourse as attachments, or post an explanation of exactly what you would put on the front and back of each card.
bullet DRA, indicate which vocabulary words from this reading you would preteach. For two of the words you feel students will have the least amount of prior knowledge on, tell how you think an average group of 12th graders would respond to the question, "What do you already know about ______________ (fill in the words you've chosen)?" Post this information on Oncourse.
bullet A Graphic Organizer, either create the graphic organizer and post it on Oncourse as an attachment, or post a detailed description of what words you would include in the graphic organizer and how you would organize them.
bullet Semantic-Feature Analysis, either create the semantic-feature analysis and post it on Oncourse as an attachment, or post a detailed description of what words from the text you would choose as well as what features you would include.
bullet A Word Web, indicate what words students should include in their word webs and what directions you will give them for completing their word webs. Post this information on Oncourse. Also, either create a word web that you think an average 12th grader would be able to create prior to reading this text and post it on Oncourse as an attachment, or post a detailed description of what you think an average 12th grader would be able to create prior to reading this text.

If the process of actually working on the strategy causes you to change your mind about which strategy is best, please indicate that in your posting and explain why you changed your mind.

WORST VOCABULARY STRATEGY -- Which of the strategies would be the poorest choice for teaching vocabulary from this text? Why? Post this information on Oncourse.

[NOTE: I know that this would be a lot easier if you knew what texts students would be reading after this one, if you knew what they've done up until now, if you yourself knew more about bugs, if you were a biology teacher, if you knew exactly what was meant by "average 12th grader," etc., but this is just meant to be a fun activity that gets you to take a good look at the vocabulary strategies introduced above, so just do the best you can.]

RESPONSE TO PARTNER'S POSTING--By the end of the day on Friday of this week respond to your partner's posting.

Have you and your partner chosen the same "best strategy" and the same "worst strategy"? If so, comment on your partner's reasoning for making these choices as well as his/her example of how the "best" strategy might look like in the classroom.

Has your partner chosen a different strategy than you for either the "best" or "worst"? Comment on your partner's reasoning for making his/her choices as well as his/her example of how the "best" strategy might look in the classroom. If your partner has persuaded you to change your mind about either the "best," the "worst," or both, let him/her know and explain why. If you feel strongly that your partner has made a poor choice, let him/her know and explain why. 

CLOSING WORDS --By the end of of the day on Sunday, read your group's and one other group's postings for this topic and then reflect on both.

Last updated: 06/07/2006, by Jennifer Conner
URL: http://www.indiana.edu/~l517/vocabulary.html
Comments: jmconner@indiana.edu
Copyright 2006, Jennifer Conner