Implications for Vocabulary Instruction within the Balanced

Literacy Framework

Research indicates that the fourth grade is a critical transition period, when students move from “learning to read” to “reading to learn.”

In the 15th annual survey of reading professionals published by the International Reading Association in Reading Today, leaders in the field identified teaching vocabulary as one of the most important issues to be addressed today(Cassidy, Ortlieb, & Shettel, 2011).

In 2012-2013 only 2% of special education students will be taking the MAAS. The simpler vocabulary in the MAAS had allowed these students greater success. Instruction will need to compensate for this change in the testing medium.

As Stahl and Stahl (2004) in Word wizards all! In J. Bauman & E. Kame'enui (Eds.), Vocabulary Instruction: Research to Practice point out,

“All words are not valued equally. Instead, what we want children to learn is the language of school. For many children, this is a foreign language” (p. 68).

1990

NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress) has since 1971 confirmed what has long been part of the commonsense knowledge of both teachers: Children from more economically advantaged families score significantly higher than the less advantaged at all ages tested (nine, 13, and 17), and the gaps become greater with increasing age.

Why do these differences occur?

By age 3, the ratio of words children experienced in various socioeconomic backgrounds:

professional/working/impoverished

45 million: 26 million: 13 million

Explicit vocabulary instruction can teach, at best, about 400 words a year (Beck, McKeown, & Kucan, 2002), hardly the 5,000 or so words students need to add to their vocabularies each year to build the 80,000-word vocabularies they need to be successful in college.

“Language Flooding” by Brabham, E., Buskist, C., Henderson, S. C., Paleologos, T. and Baugh, N.

What are the most effective ways for catching up those students who have limited vocabularies?

How can vocabulary instruction deal with the immense number of words that are unfamiliar to struggling readers?

“Language Flooding” by Brabham, E., Buskist, C., Henderson, S. C., Paleologos, T. and Baugh, N.

Integration by organizing words taught into “language gestalts” (Nilsen & Nilsen, 2005, p. 200) and semantically related clusters (Beck, Perfetti, & McKeown, 1982; Hiebert, 2005; Marzano & Marzano, 1988) that integrate and teach meaning relationships among known words and many new words simultaneously.

The limits of my language are the limits of my mind. All I know is what I have words for.

(Quote by - Ludwig Wittgenstein)

Brabham, E., Buskist, C., Henderson, S. C., Paleologos, T. and Baugh, N. (2012), Flooding Vocabulary Gaps to Accelerate Word Learning. The Reading Teacher, 65: 523–533. doi: 10.1002/TRTR.01078. Retrieved from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/TRTR.01078/full#trtr1078-sec-0004.

Cassidy, J., Ortlieb, E., & Shettel, J. (2011). What's hot, what's not for 2011. Reading Today, 28, 1 & 6–7.

Chall, J., Jacobs, V. and Baldwin, L. The Reading Crisis: Why Poor Children Fall Behind. Excerpted with permission from "Reading, Writing, and Language Connection" in J Shimron (ed.) Literacy and Education: Essays in Memory of Dina Feitelson. Cresskill, N.J.; Hampton Press, Inc. 1996, pp. 33–48.

Goodwyn, Bryan. Don't Wait Until 4th Grade to Address the Slump. Educational Leadership; April 2011, Vol. 68 Issue 7, p88-89, 2p

Hart, B. and Risely, T. (2003). The Early Catastrophe.” The American Educator. Spring.

Hiebert, E. (2005). In pursuit of an effective, efficient vocabulary curriculum for elementary students. In E.H. Hiebert, & M. Kamil (Eds.), The teaching and learning of vocabulary: Bringing scientific research to practice, pp. 243–263). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Marzano, R., & Marzano, J. (1988). A cluster approach to elementary vocabulary instruction. Newark, DE: International Reading Association.

Stahl, S., & Stahl, K. (2004). Word wizards all! In J. Bauman & E. Kame'enui (Eds.), Vocabulary instruction: Research to practice (pp. 59–78). New York: Guilford.

Wooldridge, S. (1997). Poemcrazy: Freeing your life with words. New York: Random House Three Rivers.

Wells,C. Vocabulary With Franklin: Helping Students Become Word Wizards.

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