Vocab Development

Several studies have shown that students who reach the fourth grade with limited vocabularies are at a much higher risk when it comes to reading and understanding grade-level texts in secondary settings and beyond.  Preparing students, and especially English learners, with reading and comprehension strategies, such as using morphemes to break words into understandable roots and affixes, can help students parse novel words and directly impact reading comprehension. It is, however, also critical to understand that while teaching students how to use morphology as tool to decipher word and textual meaning, root words and affixes should not be presented as a list of words for memorization. Instead, morphology should be taught within a meaningful context in relation to appropriate content material.

Resources

Bear, D., Invernezzi, M., Templeton, S., & Johnston, F. (2000). Words their way: Word study for phonics, vocabulary, and spelling instruction. Columbus, OH: Merill Macmillan.

Biancarosa, G., & Snow, C.E. (2004). Reading next—A vision for action and research in middle and high school literacy: A report to Carnegie Corporation of New York. Washington, DC: Alliance for Excellence in Education.

Carlisle, J.F. (2000). Awareness of the structure and meaning of morphologically complex words: Impact on reading. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 12, 169–190.

Chall, J.S., & Jacobs, V.A. (2003). Poor children’s fourth-grade slump. American Educator, 27(1), 14–15, 44.

Kieffer, M.J., & Lesaux, N.K. (2007). Breaking down words to build meaning: morphology, vocabulary, and reading comprehension in the urban classroom. The Reading Teacher, 61(2), 134-144.

Nagy, W.E., Berninger, V.W., & Abbott, R.D. (2006). Contributions of morphology beyond phonology to literacy outcomes of upper elementary and middle-school students. Journal of Educational Psychology, 98, 134–147.

National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. (2000). Report of the National Reading Panel. Teaching children to read: An evidence-based assessment of the scientific research literature on reading and its implications for reading instruction (NIH Publication No. 00-4769). Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.

RAND Reading Study Group. (2002). Reading for understanding: Toward an R&D program in reading comprehension. Santa Monica, CA: RAND.

How do you promote deep learning of vocabulary in your classroom?

Often, students complete vocabulary activities and are able to produce a word on demand, but still struggle to truly understand the word’s meaning—and to incorporate it into their own vocabularies. Quite frequently, a brief discussion of a word’s meaning will not provide adequate exposure, and more time will be needed to interact with the word, to understand how it relates to other words, and to learn how it functions within the larger framework of English.

Multi-sensory vocabulary instruction can be a great resource for promoting deeper learning in your classroom. To learn more, be sure to explore these ideas from Reading Rockets.

Academic language has been defined as the sets of grammar, words, and organizational structures necessary to convey and develop complex ideas, abstract thought, and formulate higher-order thinking processes (Zwiers, 2008).

Academic vocabulary is an important part of academic language. Vocabulary development is critical in developing students’ speaking, reading, writing, and listening skills, and this is often demonstrated in mainstream guidelines and standards, as with the Common Core State Standards, which suggest academic vocabulary benchmarks for grade-groupings.

Two examples of these are below:

Language Standards K-5, Grade 5 students:

Acquire and use accurately grade-appropriate general academic and domain-specific words and phrases, including those that signal contrast, addition, and other logical relationships (e.g., however, although, nevertheless, similarly, moreover, in addition). (p. 29)

Language Standards 6-12, Grade 8 students:

Acquire and use accurately grade-appropriate general academic and domain-specific words and phrases; gather vocabulary knowledge when considering a word or phrase important to comprehension or expression. (p. 53).  

Building and developing lessons that boost students’ academic vocabulary will also empower them to grow and expand not only specialized content language and discourse patterns, but also academic language in general. 

One strategy that may be helpful for academic vocabulary development is teaching word parts (i.e., root words and affixes), which can be especially valuable for EL students. Breaking down words and applying both contextual clues, as well as grammatical knowledge, may help English learners in deciphering word meaning.

Check out this resource for a brief description of why learning root words is important and a sample activity you can use with your classroom to highlight the importance of using word analysis to determine meaning!

Similarly, this article discusses how introducing words with the same root can also help solidify root word meanings across disciplines.

Or, for a sample lesson/game that involves using and creating real words through combining root words and affixes, check out this lesson from readwritethink.org.

You can also find a list of some of the most common root words/affixes, their meanings, and origins at this link.

Did you know that upon reaching high school, the average student knows roughly 40,000 words?

The Common Core State Standards stress the importance of instructors across all grade levels incorporating and developing space for students to acquire accurate knowledge of academic vocabulary and vocabulary use. While developing academic vocabulary is important for all students, explicit vocabulary instruction and guided vocabulary exploration is particularly important for English learner students. Including meaningful opportunities to learn, practice, and use academic vocabulary is critical to the development of successful students, especially in regard to their speaking, reading, and writing.

For a look at 4 practical principles to enhance vocabulary instruction in your classroom, try this article.

For more details on teaching academic content and literacy to ELs in elementary and middle school settings, check out this resource. 

How do you encourage students to build their academic English vocabulary? How do you make your classroom a language-rich environment that encourages continued learning?

Research suggests that by third grade, a typical student knows roughly 8,000 words, and by high school, has learned somewhere between 25,000 and 50,000 words. On average, students are learning 3,000-4,000 words a year.

As a result, developing a vocabulary-rich classroom and explicitly teaching vocabulary are essential steps to ensure active encounters with new words and ongoing growth in academic English—particularly for students who are not native English speakers. By intentionally designing instruction to help students grasp everyday words, while also delving deeper into lower-frequency or domain-specific vocabulary, we can shape students who are word-conscious, and support their overall development.

For practical tips on incorporating vocabulary instruction and making your classroom a language-rich environment, check out this article from Reading Rockets.

When designing a lesson or unit, where do you begin? What sorts of questions do you ask yourself in order to better prepare a learning opportunity for all students in your classroom, regardless of their academic language skills or background knowledge? 

An essential aspect of any successful lesson or unit is the incorporation of structured academic language practice (Donelly & Roe, 2010), time that allows students to use and grapple with new vocabulary and grammatical structures, while also interacting with the content area and lesson material. Sentence frames are a great tool to help instructors guide students through the content of a lesson with adequate support and scaffolding to continue to build and develop their academic English skills. 

In order for sentence frames to be effective, they must be created with several considerations in mind. These can include the curriculum skills and goals, an awareness of the various levels of differentiation that might be needed, the language demands of the unit and question asked, and then how the question works to bring a greater understanding to the presented unit or lesson. While it is not always easy to develop sentence frames that both challenge students academically and support them in their continual growth and language development, there are some great resources to help you better plan your lessons and units around the inclusion of sentence frames and guided questions. 

To learn more about the steps involved in planning and incorporating sentence frames into lessons, along with an argument for their importance, check out this article. 

Resources

Donnelly, B., & Roe, C.J. (2010). Using Sentence Frames to develop academic vocabulary for English learners. The Reading Teacher, 64(2), 133-136.

Developing language and content objectives is a key component of sheltered instruction for English learners. The effectiveness of one model of sheltered instruction, the Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol (SIOP), was demonstrated through a three-year study in two school districts in New Jersey. On average, students receiving the SIOP treatment outperformed non-SIOP students to a statistically significant level on oral, reading, and writing tests. Including concrete, measurable language and content objectives for each lesson is a great place to start supporting the academic needs of English learners, as well as all students.

Resource

Short, D., Fidelman, C., & Louguit, M. (2012). Developing academic language in English language learners through sheltered instruction. TESOL Quarterly, 46(2), 333-360.

Findings from a study conducted by the Center for the Improvement of Early Reading Achievement (2001) suggests that there are three primary ways in which children indirectly learn and develop their vocabulary:

· Through listening and communicating in conversations, primarily with adults;

· Through listening to adults read to them; and,

· Through  reading on their own.

These results highlight the importance of educators actively incorporating multiple ways to help students learn vocabulary, such as explicitly pre-teaching vocabulary, integrating research tools like dictionaries or thesauruses, teaching the meanings of prefixes and suffixes for deciphering word meanings, and teaching how to use inter-text context as clues for identifying word meaning and developing comprehension (CIERA, 2001). Direct instruction and empowering students with the skills and tools to decipher word meanings is critical, especially for EL students.

Resources

Center for the Improvement of Early Reading Achievement. (2001). Put reading first: The research building blocks for teaching children to read. The Partnership for Reading: National Institute for Literacy; National Institute of Child Health and Human Development; and U.S. Department of Education.

Identifying which of the four language domains is involved in a lesson is an important first step in developing effective and clear language objectives for your instruction and assessment of learning.  Identifying the listening, speaking, reading, and writing demands embedded in the teaching and learning of lessons will also provide the basis for ensuring that your lessons provide frequent and diverse opportunities for practicing and developing skills in each of the domains. 

When creating language objectives, a jumping off place is with these six, easy questions (adapted from a webinar from Jordan Meranus and Allison Balter; slides can be found here):

1)    What content objective am I using?

• First, think through your content objective—what language will the students need to understand the content and what language will they need to demonstrate their understanding?

2)    What domain(s) do you plan to focus on?

• What are you asking students to do in the lesson? Are students in your lesson discussing with a partner, doing individual reading and summarizing, debating? Identifying the language skills a learner will need to complete activities will also help you build in necessary content and language scaffolds (e.g. what words will students have to know to be able to speak, listen, read, or write, about the subject)/

3)    What levels are your students?

• Knowing your students’ language proficiency and content knowledge levels is crucial to language objective planning. This will serve as guide for creating language objectives that are appropriate for building upon their existing linguistic repertoire.

Once you have thought through these three questions, you’ll be ready to hone in on further developing and clarifying language objectives.

4)    What will a student have to do, or what is the language process required in the lesson?

• What will a student have to show, or do, in the lesson (e.g. identify, evaluate, describe, list, interpret, develop, compare/contrast, give, create, critique)?

5)    What are necessary supports?

• What are scaffolds that would help support students throughout the lesson to better meet its language objective (e.g. vocabulary development tools, visual diagrams, listening exercises, etc.)?

6)    Is there a strong connection between the language objective and the content objective?

• Make sure that your language objective is supporting the goals and purpose of the content objective. Remember, language objectives are supposed to help promote and encourage language development within the larger context of lessons and units.

These six easy questions can help you start to look at how language is being used in your lessons and enhance the instructional and other supports that promote language development throughout your instruction.  

For English learners in today’s schools, development of ‘academic’ language in English can be a critical part of accessing the core content of the classroom. Research suggests that while ELs might develop a conversational vocabulary in as little as two or three years, ‘academic’ language development may take longer—at least five to seven years.

Researchers suggest that ‘academic’ language might rely on  vocabulary knowledge and explicit instruction strategies which directly support and assess students’ comprehension in subjects like math, science, literature, and history. 

Resources 

Cummins, J. (1979). Cognitive-academic language proficiency, linguistic interdependence, optimal age and some other matters. Working Papers in Bilingualism, 19, 197-205.

Richard-Amato, P.A. & Snow, M.A. (2005). Academic success for English language learners: Strategies for K-12 teachers. White Plaines, NY: Pearson.

Scarcella, R. (2003). Academic English: A conceptual framework. University of California Linguistic Minority Research Institute (Technical Report 2003-1).

Thomas, W., & Collier, V. (2002). A national study of school effectiveness for language minority students’ long-term academic achievement. Santa Cruz, CA: Center for Research on Education (NCBE) Ressource Collection Series, No.9. 

Wong Fillmore, L., & Snow, C.E. (2000). What teachers need to know about language. (Contract No. ED_99-C0-008). U.S. Department of Education, Office of Education Research and Improvement. Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics.

 Zwiers, J. (2008). Building academic language: Essential practices for content classrooms. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. 

In a study of core academic subject instruction in 23 ethnically diverse classrooms, researchers made a surprising discovery: only 1.4% of instructional time was spent working to increase students’ vocabulary knowledge.

Allowing for time to develop students’ academic vocabularies is essential for the success of all students, but especially ELs. Students need ample structured time to acquire new words and meanings, and make sense of these meanings in context. For ELs, word meaning and vocabulary-building exercises should be scaffolded and built directly into lessons, and they should use a variety of tools (e.g., native language instruction and resources) and language domains (speaking, listening, reading, writing).

Resources

Scott, J. A., Jamieson-Noel, D., & Asselin, M. (2003). Vocabulary instruction throughout the day in 23 Canadian upper-elementary classrooms. Elementary School Journal, 103, 269–268.

When developing lessons, how do you identify which vocabulary should be highlighted?

The majority of an individual’s vocabulary is acquired incidentally through the day-to-day actions of reading, listening and speaking. However, ‘academic’ language (words, structures and forms), or the language of schooling, may not correspond with linguistic interactions outside of school. Regardless of the content area, intentional and explicit vocabulary instruction is critically important for promoting the success of all students—and especially English learners—in school and beyond.

Deciding which words to emphasize can also be challenging for teachers, especially in mixed level or mainstream classrooms. One approach to prioritizing and organizing vocabulary involves the three-tier model, which breaks vocabulary into three levels based on meaning, form, and function.

In this model, the vocabulary tiers are organized by frequency and form. Tier 1 consists of "basic" words that commonly appear in spoken language.  Because they are heard frequently in a range of contexts, Tier 1 words often do not require explicit instruction (especially for non-ELs). This tier contains simple concrete nouns, adjectives, and verbs. Examples of Tier 1 words are: clock, baby, happy, and walk.

Tier 2 includes high frequency words, which are less likely to have been integrated into ELs' oral language and are more typically expressed by mature language users. Examples of Tier 2 words are: obvious, complex, establish, and verify.

Finally, Tier 3 includes words that are rarely used outside of specific content areas or domains and may also be central to establishing conceptual understanding—therefore, potentially integral for content instruction.  Examples of Tier 3 words are: economics, isotope, asphalt, Revolutionary War, and crepe.

The three-tiered vocabulary model can be a valuable tool for addressing how students interact with vocabulary in the context of a lesson, as well as teachers’ provision of supports that better promote the accessibility of content.

Resources

Beck, I. L., McKeown, M. G., & Kucan, L. (2002). Bringing words to life. New York: The Guilford Press.

Graves, M. F. (2006). The vocabulary book. New York: Teacher’s College Press.

Some may discuss listening, speaking, reading, and writing skill development as being individual processes. However, research suggests that the four language domains are inherently linked. For instance, one study found that students who struggled with oral language skills were roughly 4-5 times more likely than their peers to also face challenges with regard to reading skills.  Oral language development has also been closely linked to word recognition and the reading comprehension process, and has been found to be essential for further language skill development.

Oral language development is essential to the entire language learning process, as it also helps to support writing and reading skills. Making sure to incorporate all four language domains in lesson development and delivery is therefore, an essential part of supporting the needs of English learner students.

 Resources

Cain, K., & Oakhill, J. (Eds.), (2007). Children’s comprehension problems in oral and written language. New York: Guilford.

Catts, H.W., Fey, M.E., Zhang, X.T., Tomblin, J.B., (2001). Estimating the risk of future reading difficulties in kindergarten children: A research-based model and its clinical implication. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 32, 38-50. 

What do you feel is essential to supporting and encouraging positive EL achievement in your classroom and school?

A recent publication by Getting Smart highlights the importance of ensuring that curriculum and instruction for English learners be research-based and standards-aligned to best promote language and literacy development, as well as content learning.  The report highlights 10 essential elements, including developing a strong classroom culture that leverages students’ strengths  and resources, and recommends the intentional use of digital tools for encouraging and supporting English learners’ growth.

Check out the full report to see how you can better promote learning for all students in your classroom!