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Thursday, March 1, 2018

Buiding Vocabulary: An OverviewThe first in a series on teaching and learning new words.

The importance of a strong vocabulary tosuccessful reading is well-documented.Because of its importance vocabularydevelopment is considered one key to a richlanguage arts curriculum. But while thereare many paths to an increased vocabulary,there is no silver bullet, no magic formula,no quick fix for vocabulary. Vocabularydevelopment is the work of a lifetime, a literal cradle to grave activity, a questthat has no end. As teachers our job is, in part, to teach vocabulary, but moreimportantly it is to set students up to be in the vocabulary acquisition businessfor the rest of their lives.

First, let's take a look at the many paths that lead students to a richvocabulary.

1. Conversation - Children, from the earliest of ages, learn wordsthrough conversation with adults and other children. Children who aretalked with, rather than talked at, tend to build larger vocabularies. Inthe classroom it is critical that teachers have real conversations withchildren and structure the classroom so that children can have realconversations with each other. Conversations are two way streets whereparticipants are expected to listen and also speak.

2. Reading - Before children learn to read independently, they learn newvocabulary through read alouds. Once children learn to readindependently, wide reading in a variety of genres and on a variety oftopics is the single best way to continue developing word knowledge.Read alouds, with teacher explanation of words, should, of course,continue well after children have begun to read independently. In orderfor reading to lead to improved vocabulary, that reading must be wideawake to the new words the reader encounters. In other words thereader must have a well-developed word consciousness (see below).

3. Writing - Truly knowing a new word requires many encounters with aword. One good way to reinforce vocabulary learning that comes fromreading or direct instruction is through writing. Please note, I am nottalking here about writing sentences for words that have been assignedarbitrarily, or the kind of artificial writing created when students areasked to use a set of vocabulary terms in a paragraph. I am talking hereof a much more organic approach, where children reinforce newvocabulary by responding to or summarizing what they have read orwhat new information they have learned. The point of learning newvocabulary is not the words themselves, but the ideas these wordsconvey.

4. Direct Instruction - Research has shown that students can also learnwords through direct instruction. Again, direct instruction does notmean being assigned a list of words to look up, writing the definition,and then writing the word in a sentence. This is not instruction at all,but busy work. Direct instruction means the teacher deliberatelydiscussing a targeted word, talking about its meaning, showing how it isused in context and engaging the children with the word by showing

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how it connects to their own experience.5. Morphemic Analysis - Knowledge of root words, prefixes, and

suffixes can also assist students in determining the meaning of a wordand in building vocabulary based on common elements. It is helpfulwhen you run across the word "pseudonym" in your reading, if youknow that the prefix "pseudo-" means "fake" , and that the root "nym"means name. This knowledge can then help you extend to other wordslike homonym, synonym, and antonym.

6. Context Clues - Knowing that authors often leave clues in their writingto help readers determine the meaning of an unknown word is alsouseful in developing vocabulary. Research has indicated that the use ofcontext clues is most effective when students are directly taught thestrategy and the various ways that authors signal the meaning of words.

7. Word Histories - The history of words can also be helpful when tryingto determine the meaning of a word. Telling word stories can helpstudents develop an interest and curiosity in words. One such story I tellis about the word "sign." It seems that the word sign was oncepronounced with the "g" being sounded, but over the years the "g" wasdropped and the "i" made long. But the "g" has been retained in spellingto help us with the meaning of such words as signal, signature,signatory, significant, etc.

8. Consulting an Expert - Sometimes no particular strategy can helpand outside help is required. Students need to learn to use resources likea dictionary quickly and efficiently, but I also like to suggest thatstudents should consider other resources that might be available as well.It might be more efficient for the reader to simply ask a classmate(perhaps one with particular knowledge of a particular topic), or theteacher, or another adult.

Just as readers need a repertoire of strategies to decode an unknown word(phonics, word families, chunking, what makes sense?), they also need arepertoire of strategies to determine word meaning. Indeed, any encounterwith a new word might involve a bit of recall of instruction, a bit of morphemicanalysis, a bit of context, and a bit of consulting an expert. Teaching studentsthese strategies is helpful, but we also need to make sure we teach them to usethe strategies flexibly.

Word Consciousness

None of the good vocabulary instruction we do will matter much unless wesimultaneously help students develop word consciousness. Wordconsciousness means an awareness of and a curiosity about new words thatwill motivate the learning of new words. I have written about wordconsciousness extensively in this post. Teachers have a critical role to play indeveloping student word consciousness. First, and most critically that roleincludes being a model of word curiosity. During read alouds and any otheractivity, the teacher must communicate her fascination with, enthusiasm for,and love of words, at the ingenious ways that words work, at how the sameword can have so many different meanings, at how authors choose to usecertain words to communicate certain ideas.

By skillfully and regularly using think alouds teachers can help studentsdevelop their own fascination and enthusiasm for words. Here is an exampleof a think aloud from a fourth grade read aloud.

From the reading: The truck farm is located on a beautiful stream in apastoral setting.

Boys and girls, I am not sure I know the meaning of "pastoral" in thissentence, so let me see what I can use to help me figure it out. I know that thesuffix -al is used on adjectives, so the word is a describing word for the noun"setting." If I take the -al off I am left with the root word "pastor." I know apastor is kind of like a minister or a priest, but that meaning of the worddoesn't seem to make sense here. "Pastor" also looks a bit like "pasture", andthis sentence is talking about a farm, so I wonder if the word could meansomething along the lines of "like a pasture." That seems to make sense. Let'slook the word up and see what the dictionary has to say. So the dictionarysays "associated with the country life." So that seems close to what we

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Buiding Vocabulary: An OverviewThe ?rst in a series on teaching and learning new words. The importance ofa strong vocabulary to successful reading is well-documented. Because ofits importance vocabulary development is considered one key to a richlanguage arts curriculum. But while th...

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Posted by Russ Walsh at 6:58 AM

guessed. The dictionary also says that this is the type of farm is usuallyassociated with sheep or cattle. The word comes from the Latin word pastormeaning shepherd. That also seems to be where the word "pastor" meaningminister comes from, because religious pastors are often referred to astending to their flock, in this case, not sheep, but the people who attend theirchurch.

In this think aloud I have tried to demonstrate for the children that they canuse context clues, morphemic analysis, word histories, and outside experts incombination to discover the meaning of a word and to get the bonus ofdiscovering some interesting ways that words are intertwined in meaning.

Armed with word consciousness and some word solving skills, students arepositioned to grow their vocabulary with each encounter with text.

In future posts in this series, I will look in more detail at other instructionalstrategies we can use to build vocabulary.

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