job corps academic standards implementation...

Chapter 6: Vocabulary Instruction

IntroductionIn Job Corps, subject mastery is inextricably tied to understanding the technical language of the subject and being able to refine, manipulate and apply that language.1 This technical language for industry is often called “trade vocabulary,” and it is the single most important type of instruction in Job Corps.

A trade vocabulary is made up of all the words needed to understand and function in a given profession. This is a lot of vocabulary! In fact, there are more vocabulary words and terms to learn in the typical Automotive Technician TAR than students learn in a year of high school Spanish.

Mastering the trade vocabulary is simply essential. This is the reason every TAR now includes a TAR section called “Industry Vocabulary” containing one item: Define and use technical words and phrases relevant to [TAR name]. This is the reason there is a separate academic standard for trade vocabulary (English/Language Arts 1.4: Defines vocabulary common to the industry.) In fact, mastering the trade terminology is so important that this entire chapter is focused on how to teach this vocabulary most successfully.

Consider this: For full comprehension, students need to be familiar with 90% of the words in a text, video, or oral presentation. If their comprehension is less than 90%, frustration and “tuning out” almost inevitably follow.2 Mastery of the vocabulary standard is a key to success in the technical classroom or shop, as well as in academics. And it is key to student success after Job Corps, as students gain employment, pass certification tests, and move up the career ladder.

Clearly, the vocabulary of the trade must be taught. This chapter focuses on teaching vocabulary effectively, efficiently and creatively to keep students focused and interested.

Selecting the Vocabulary Terms to Teach

At first glance, selection of which vocabulary terms to teach may appear simple. The teacher should simply teach the vocabulary that students need to demonstrate mastery of TAR items and pass certification tests. In practice, however, selection is more complex. There are thousands of terms that are used in the vocational areas of any industry, and not all can be taught. Job Corps instructors have always made decisions about the specific words to teach. Moving forward, these choices should be made consciously and in the most productive way possible.

Below are steps to take to select the most important terms to teach. Step 1 : Create a list of key terms. This list will include the academic and career success terms needed in the industry, as well as the technical vocabulary that relates directly to TAR line items.

Guide to Standards-based Instruction Chapter 6: Vocabulary Instruction of 15 Workgroup Draft (5.9.11)

Step 1.A. Technical Terms. When reviewing the list of TAR line items students must master in a given TAR section, first list the important terms or words that specify the key concepts, processes, and procedures. For example, below are the items from Section B, Internet Protocol Routing, of the Information Technology/Computer Networking TAR for Routing, Switching, and Networking. The words, terms, and acronyms that are bolded below probably represent the important vocabulary in this duty section:

1. Define IP routing and related terms and concepts (e.g., static route, connected routes, directly connected subnets, Variable Length Subnet Masking (VLSM), route summarization, and discontiguous classful networks).

2. Describe the difference between manual route summarization and autosummarization.

3. Define Access Control Lists or ACLs and related terms and concepts (e.g., telnet, secure shell or SSH, Reflexive Access Lists, Dynamic ACLs, and Time-Based ACLs).

4. Describe the difference between standard and extended IP Access Control Lists.

5. Identify ping and traceroute Commands.6. Describe the packet forwarding process.7. Calculate and apply a VLSM IP addressing design to a network.8. Determine the appropriate classless addressing scheme using VLSM and

summarization to satisfy addressing requirements in a LAN/WAN environment.

9. Describe the technological requirements for running IPv6 (e.g., protocols, dual stack, tunneling).

10.Describe IPv6 addresses.11.Identify and correct common problems associated with IP addressing and

host configurations.

For anyone not well-versed in IT, this list barely sounds like English! Our students feel the same about the trade vocabulary in our TARs! All industries have their own “foreign language.” This foreign language proves the need to work extensively on industry vocabulary.

Once the terms stated in the TAR items have been identified, the teacher must look one step further to the vocabulary words not explicitly written in the TAR but required for response to the task described. For example, in the Hospitality, Advanced Culinary TAR, the student is required to “Describe the method to prepare yeast breads.” The teacher might identify the word yeast from this task description. But to complete the task, the student will need to know a number of other terms not printed in the TAR, such as gluten, proof, and knead. These are also clearly key words for understanding.

Additionally, the course instructional materials, including the textbook, if any, and the teacher’ presentation notes may be sources for important terms. Because these are a serious source of course information, students must understand at least 90% of the vocabulary in these materials to ensure comprehension of the content.


And finally, the teacher must review state, national, or industry certification exam study guides to ensure that all the trade vocabulary that may appear on these tests has been included. The terms in the certification tests are probably the most important trade vocabulary to include.

Step 1.B. Math and Science Terms. Career technical and academic instructors must work together to identify math operations and science concepts required to complete TAR line items. For example, in the basic Hospitality/Culinary Arts TAR, Sections B, C, and D, students must master the following math and science-related requirements. The key terms are shown in bold:

Identify whole numbers, decimals and fractions. Identify ratios and describe how they relate to fractions. Identify formulas used in baking. Convert volume and weight measures. Convert U.S. and metric measurement systems. Demonstrate recipe conversion. Identify, use, clean, and sanitize cutting tool.

Additionally, there are the terms within the bolded words that must be mastered, as seen earlier, such as milliliter, liter, gram, kilogram, etc. within “metric measurement systems.” But in addition to the science/math terminology in the TAR, the following types of words must also be added to the vocabulary list. Words that:

Have different meanings in other settings (e.g., odd, even, radical, obtuse, rational); Have the same definition, but use a different term (e.g., the bore of a piston is the same as

the diameter of a circle; the stroke of a piston is also the height of a circle; piston displacement is the same as volume); and

Signal the use of an arithmetic operation (of means multiply, more than or increased by means add, decreased by means subtract).

Step 1.C. Career Success Standards Terms. Finally, the teacher should review the Career Success Standards to identify difficult terms related to behaviors required to complete technical tasks. For example, most industries require workers to follow directions and accept feedback. This means that students must be able to ask for clarification and show resilience when receiving both positive and negative feedback. Clarification and resilience are terms from the Career Success Standards that the teacher should teach, use, and model so students understand the required behavior.

Step 2: Classify each word on the list into one of three groups: a) must know, b) should know, and c) nice to know. Classifying words is a judgment call, but the teacher must be strongly influenced by the certification exam terminology content, as this is the final test in the real world for the effectiveness of instruction.

Step 2.A. Must-Know Terms. Must-know terms reflect the trade’s critical concepts and procedures and must be included in the vocabulary list, even if they are not specifically stated in the TAR. For example, the concept of biohazard and procedures such as isolation are critical to students’ understanding of health care TARs.


Some instructors feel that all the trade vocabulary in their TAR items are must-know terms, but this may not be true for some words or phrases in your industry TAR. Because the TARs were written by experts in each industry area, the importance of each term included is not equal across the TARs.

Step 2.B. Should-know terms are more factual in nature and may be used to explain critical concepts and procedures. For example, many heath occupations require knowledge of procedural and diagnostic coding. Like must-know terms, your direct instruction or peer assisted instruction is best for teaching these target words. Another way to look at should-know terms is that most of the students in your course should master this vocabulary, but not every student absolutely must know the terms to be successful in your industry.

Should-know terms may be found in the TAR items in parentheses used to include examples. They may also come from textbooks or other material where you could define them to increase student comprehension.

Step 2.C. Nice-to-know terms are not critical to concept or procedure development, and students will not need to demonstrate mastery of this trade vocabulary to complete the TAR or earn certification. Students who have mastered the critical items and have time for more advanced work are good candidates for nice-to-know terms.

Some of your students will become particularly interested in a specialty area of your TAR, and you can offer individual learning opportunities for them that will include the nice-to-know terms. For example, if a student in Renewable Resources and Energy, Ornamental Horticulture decided to become a fern specialist, she/he would need to know terms like fronds, sphagnum moss, and scale.

Step 3: Organize your terms into major instructional areas in the sequence you teach them in the course . Keep them in separate areas for “must,” “should,” and “nice,” as in the sample from the Health, Licensed Vocational Nurse TAR below.

TrainingSchedule

Instructional Area

Category Terms for this Area

July 21-22 Urinary procedures

Must irrigationcatheterkidneybladderurethra

Should foley catheterstraight catheterizationsterile urine samplebladder irrigationdiureticincontinenceinterstitial cystitis

Nice cystoscopy


Step 4 : Determine who will teach the trade vocabulary. “Who will teach the trade vocabulary?” is really not a dumb question. In several Job Corps centers, the academic and career technical teachers have teamed up to teach vocabulary, and the results have been truly impressive.

At these centers, the academic teacher “pre-teaches” the trade vocabulary terms before the technical teacher begins to teach and use them. This way, every term is taught twice, and, of course, practiced many more times. And students hear it from two different teachers with two different styles and two different content concerns.

In this chapter, you’ll see this idea of team-teaching the trade vocabulary played out between an academic and Career Technical Training instructor. This format naturally requires the two of you to collaborate to make it work. In appendix C, there are some tips on collaboration you might want to check out.

If you aren’t lucky enough to have a collaborative potential with an academic teacher, don’t worry. Just use your split personality to play the part of both teachers yourself. Seriously, you can certainly play the role of both teachers; it’s not hard. But you have another option of using peer-assisted instruction that provides more variety for the students and uses that famous peer power. For example, in the TAR for Retail Sales and Services, Child Development, you might ask each of three students to research and, just like you would, teach one of the following terms: family day care, center-based infant-toddler care, and center-based preschool.

Step 5: Figure out when to teach the must-know terms. This will vary from one task area to the next and from one stage of understanding, such as the introduction to the content, to another, such as advanced application.

Unfortunately, we don’t have a lot of guidance from the research as to how many terms are optimal to teach in a given time period, because most of that work has been done in academic classrooms. For example, one study used 12 vocabulary words a week selected from student reading passages3, and that would hardly meet the needs of most technical instructors. On the other hand, we do know that foreign language immersion programs for adults would consider 50 words a day somewhat minimal.

To determine how many you want to teach in a day or week, you should figure that it takes about 5 minutes to do the initial teaching of a word using the method described later in this chapter. Let’s say that the academic teacher has 30 minutes/day that he can devote to vocabulary instruction; that means he could do 6 words a day—or 30 words a week. If the technical teacher needs to cover more than that, she and the academic teacher determine the 30 words they will co-teach and the other words that the technical teacher would handle on her own.

The other aspect of the “when-to-teach” question is the timing of the vocabulary instruction. For knowledge items, such as “Define safe work procedures to use around electrical hazards,” terminology instruction is almost always simultaneous with content instruction. However, vocabulary instruction in relation to skill mastery is another matter.


You may wish to teach the vocabulary before you provide the skill content instruction. For example, the academic teacher might provide the vocabulary instruction for an upcoming unit in the week before the career technical training instructor begins teaching that skill. The advantages of this approach are that

o the skills instruction flows smoothly from step to step without having to pause to define key terms;

o students know what the words mean before content instruction begins, so they’re able to concentrate fully on the steps involved in the skill itself; and

o you can increase the number of repetitions of the trade vocabulary words, as you are essentially teaching and then reviewing in context.

The primary disadvantage is that the initial vocabulary instruction is out-of-context, so that students are learning the meaning of words that they may not yet have a frame of reference for..A second option is to teach the vocabulary during the content instruction. This may have been the way you handled trade terms in the past, as there is a tremendous advantage to learning the names of items and operations in their actual context of use. However, you do risk breaking the flow of the information, particularly if you do the full vocabulary instruction at this point.

Finally, you might choose to teach trade vocabulary after the basic skill instruction. While this sounds weird, it just recognizes that some instructors find that exact terminology can get in the way of teaching a basic skill in the initial stage. For example, you might demonstrate how to true up a door jamb using a bar level without naming the tool or explaining how it works. After students can use the level correctly, you introduce the correct term and complete the vocabulary instruction.

How to Teach Selected Vocabulary Terms

Now that you’ve identified the trade vocabulary terms students need to know for success in the industry, let’s look at what the research says about getting the biggest return on our instructional buck, that is, what works best in vocabulary instruction.

In this guide, we’ve blended a variety of approaches to vocabulary instruction based on the findings of leading researchers in the areas of background knowledge development, adult literacy, and literacy for students with learning disabilities. These researchers found that:• Using a new term correctly (ELA 1.4) takes multiple exposures to the word over time in a

variety of contexts;• Understanding the morphology—Greek/Latin roots, suffixes, prefixes (ELA 1.10)—helps

students significantly in recognition, retention, and correct use, as well as figuring out new words. Some TAR’s actually require this kind of knowledge. For example, Section A in several of the Health Care TAR’s, including Clinical Medical Assistant, Dental Assistant, Medical Administration, and Nurse Assistant/Home Health Aide, requires that students.


o Demonstrate knowledge of basic word structure of medical terms; ando Demonstrate knowledge of the following in medical terminology:

Prefixes, Suffixes, Abbreviations, and Signs and symbols.

• Asking students to describe terms in their own words, in drawings, in song, or in wordless actions (not just copy words from a dictionary) creates a lasting mental picture and understanding of the word;

• Having students compare the new term to one they already know lets them build on existing knowledge—the fastest way to acquire and retain new information;

• Introducing new vocabulary terms in lists of words that are connected in their meaning makes word recognition more automatic; and

• Making graphic representations of the term (pictures, charts, etc.) greatly assists many students, especially visual learners and English Learners, in mastering its use.

You can double the effectiveness of these research-based techniques by using the collaborative/cooperative instructional model described below. In this model, the academic teacher introduces the agreed-upon terms using a five-step process, and the trade instructor builds a more in-depth and sophisticated understanding of the meaning and use of the term using a seven-step process. This approach gives students the multiple exposures necessary to anchor vocabulary terms into permanent memory, and helps them cement both passive/recognition and active/speaking-writing vocabulary development.

First encounter: the academic teacher. The academic teacher has students maintain a Certification Notebook where they keep a section for trade vocabulary. The vocabulary section has room for two words on each page; each word has a rectangle divided into four quadrants—the top two being smaller than the bottom two. Your students will quickly learn to draw the organizer design, putting two rectangles to a page. Here are the steps for using the trade vocabulary organizer. For these examples, the terms are from the Health Care industry TARs.

Step 1: Introduce the word. Write the word on the board. Have the students write it, correctly spelled, in the upper left quadrant of their half-page vocabulary organizer.

microorganism

Step 2: Pronounce the word. Say it clearly, at a normal pace. Then have students practice saying it by repeating. For example, you say “microorganism,” they repeat, you say it again, they repeat. Then they write the word phonetically, as it sounds to them and using capitals for the


emphasis, in parentheses under the correct spelling. This will be different for each student. There is no right or wrong approach.

microorganism(Mike row ORgan ism)

Step 3: Talk about the word’s morphology—origin and root, prefix, or suffix, if there are any. You may not have that information at the tip of your tongue, but you can easily get it at www.dictionary.com. Duplicate the list of prefixes, roots and suffixes in appendix E or make your own. In the first days of instruction, pass out the list and explain how prefixes, suffixes, and roots help you decode unfamiliar words. At the beginning, you can help students identify the roots/affixes orally and have them look up the meanings. Soon they will remember the most common ones without even looking at the list.

For example, you might say, “-ian” or -an is a common suffix. Check your list to see what it means. Then give an example. “So if I say a woman from Florida is a Floridian, it means that she belongs to the group of people from Florida, right?” Have them fill in prefixes, roots, or suffixes they find in the upper right hand quadrant of the organizer. Many words, especially nouns, may have none. Some have several, for example, anticoagulant has anti = prefix meaning against, opposite of, counteracting; co = prefix meaning together; and ant = suffix meaning an agent of the action.

Microorganism(Mike row ORgan ism)

Micro = smallOrganism = living cell or groups of cells

Step 4: Ask students what they think the word means and then describe the word accurately. Asking students what they think the word means lets them use their prior knowledge—right or wrong. You can start with their definition and move on to accurately describe the word, showing how it’s used in a sentence and comparing it to other terms that students already know.

As an academic teacher, you will want to collaborate with the career technical training teacher on the definition for the word. This is not because you’re unable to do your own research or the definition in your own brain isn’t good enough. You need to know how the technical instructor is going to define and use the term in the class or shop because you really don’t want to confuse students with two different meanings. Once you know how the term will be used in the shop, then you can get more details from the Internet, if you need them for your description.


http://www.dictionary.com/

The description itself doesn’t have to be lengthy. For example, an academic instructor teaching the word “periodontics” might say,

Very good. You remembered that “odontic” refers to teeth. ’Peri-’ is a prefix that means “around or near.” So periodontics has something to do with your gums that are around your teeth. In fact, the gums provide the nutrients required for healthy teeth, so if your gums are in bad shape, your dentist will understand that you need periodontic treatment. She will probably refer you to a periodontist, who will diagnose the problem and help fix up the life support system for the teeth. Periodontal problems can be genetic, but they’re more often caused by lack of good care (like not using floss) or abuse (like taking certain kinds of drugs, especially crack cocaine.)

If you want to provide more memorable detail, you could tell a story about when your nephew was sent to a periodontist, show an unpleasant picture of periodontal disease, or show a video of a periodontist at work. And you can always ask for stories from the students. Do not send students to the dictionary or their textbook to look up the word and write a definition.

You are asking them to write their own understanding in their own words using the information you provided, what they saw in the video clip, and/or the correct information they had from previous knowledge. A description in the student’s own words may include a comparison to another similar word or process. The description can be primarily in the student’s home language if that’s helpful; the understanding is what’s important. Here’s a sample of a student entry:

Microorganism(Mike row ORgan ism)


A microorganism is an animal that usually has only one cell—way too small to see unless you have a microscope. Bacteria, viruses, and some kinds of fungus are microorganisms. People commonly call microorganisms that cause disease or infections “germs.” Medical professionals call microorganisms that cause disease “pathogens.” (There are some microorganisms that don’t cause disease.)

Step 5: Ask students to draw a picture of the word. The picture is not an entry in an art contest, and it only needs to make sense to the student. It can use symbols, words, stick art, whatever. It could depict anything. It might show the word in action. It might symbolically represent the word. It might capture an association of the pronunciation with the word meaning.

This last approach is shown in the example below where the student sketched a rowboat with a microphone (mike in this case) and an organ in a “sea” of bacteria, viruses, etc. hidden below the surface of the water. Later, when asked the definition of “microorganism,” the student recalls the


sketch and remembers that a microorganism is a small, one celled organism that cannot be seen by the unaided eye.

Microorganism(mike row ORgan ism)


A microorganism is an animal that usually has only one cell—way too small to see unless you have a microscope. Bacteria, viruses, and some kinds of fungus are microorganisms. People commonly call microorganisms that cause disease or infections “germs.” Medical professionals call microorganisms that cause disease “pathogens.” (There are some microorganisms that don’t cause disease.)

All students, even the visual learners, will probably need a little help with this at first. Though we may see the world in terms of pictures, most of us don’t draw them very often. You can help by showing students examples of pictures that you’ve made up for the first few words. Then you can call on students who seem to get the concept easily to share their drawings for the next set of vocabulary, and after that, most students are fine on their own. Or you can let them work in teams of 2 to 5 to figure out how to represent some of the more difficult or more abstract terms. Just continue to assure them that absolutely anything they draw is OK as long as it helps them to remember. Here is another example:

periodontics(perry o DON ticks)

peri- = around or nearodontic = referring to the teeth

Periodontics is a specialty in dentistry where the dentist is trained to diagnose and treat gum disease. Many kinds of dental problems are really periodontic problems because the gums provide the life support for the teeth, like hair problems really being scalp problems. People who don’t floss regularly or use drugs are likely to have periodontic problems. Their regular dentist might send them to the periodontist for special treatment.


Second encounter: the career technical teacher. The technical teacher uses the vocabulary organizer to increase student understanding and fluidity by updating, elaborating, applying, and practicing the terms in their Certification Notebook. As the technical teacher, you’ll use the Certification Notebook to help students build their understanding of terms introduced by the academic instructor and to introduce terms not covered previously.

The next part of the instruction will sound familiar, as it’s probably what you do now. But having the framework of the quadrants in the Certification Notebook entries makes your instructional time much more effective and the results, in terms of student understanding and achievement, vastly increased. Here are the steps.

Step 1: Review. Begin your teaching of a given term by having pairs of students review the word entry they made in their Certification Notebook during the academic class. Then call on a student to describe the first term.

Step 2: Expand. Using that student’s wording, expand the description and correct any misconceptions. For example, the description for “catheter” provided by the academic teacher could be expanded by saying, “There are two basic kinds of catheters: indwelling and external.” Then you would continue with a discussion of each type, when each might be used, how to care for a patient with each type, etc. At this point, you will probably teach the key procedures and have students duplicate the process, so the vocabulary discussion moves directly into hands-on learning.

When the students finish the hands-on learning (with note-taking in the Certification Notebook) and practice, ask them to return to the vocabulary term(s) they began with and add any information they now think is relevant. They can improve and add detail to their drawing, too. For example, after actually learning to use wound drainage systems, the student might add to his Certification Notebook vocabulary entry:

Hemovac and Jackson Pratt are brand names of suction systems for draining fluid from a wound. The drainage tube is near the surgical opening and held with stitches. Change the dressing 1x/day and empty the fluid container 2x/day. Measure the ml in the container and record it. You can teach patients to do this at home. There are good directions at http://medicalcenter.osu.edu/pdfs/PatientEd/Materials/PDFDocs/procedure/how-to/hemo.pdf.

At this point, students have a fully developed description of the process or concept in their notes and a summarized description of the vocabulary word and the way it fits in the process or big idea in their vocabulary quadrant. This is a powerful combination because

• It builds learning repetitions into the initial learning experience; they first learn about the word as a vocabulary term, they hear and speak the word, they break it into roots and affixes, they describe it in their own words, they draw a picture of it, they review it before they apply it, they put the term into action, and then they go back to add to their notes about the term.


http://medicalcenter.osu.edu/pdfs/PatientEd/Materials/PDFDocs/procedure/how-to/hemo.pdf

http://medicalcenter.osu.edu/pdfs/PatientEd/Materials/PDFDocs/procedure/how-to/hemo.pdf

• It relates the vocabulary term to the big idea and the overall process; for example, students see the relationship between asepsis and infection control.

• It provides students with two built-in study tools that are inter-related—a perfect set-up for their review before your assessment and before their certification test.

Step 3: Review frequently. You probably expected to see this step, given what you know about the number of meaningful repetitions required for excellent performance and long-term understanding. You can review in many ways. Here are two. First, you can review the overall content/process using both student notes and the vocabulary organizers. Second, you can review the trade vocabulary terms alone. When you review the vocabulary alone, be sure to cover terms from the beginning of the course on.

Use the techniques and instructional strategies discussed in chapter 4. Here is a brief summary of the strategies you might use:

• Calling for comparisons—similarities and differences. For example, what is the difference between a nasogastric and a gastric tube?

• Classifying into types of words. Give students a list of words you’ve covered and have them classify them into, for example, tools and actions; OR terms used in preventing dental carries vs. terms used in treating dental carries; OR terms referring to strokes, terms referring to myocardial infarction, terms referring to renal failure, etc.

• Creating metaphors. For example, a thrombosis in an artery is like a blockage in the sink plumbing: the liquid can’t get through and it makes the whole system less effective or totally dysfunctional.

• Creating analogies. For example, __(sitzbath)___ is to a bath as shorts are to a full length dress OR __(arthritis)___ is to the musculoskeletal system as arteriosclerosis is to the circulatory system.

• Finding similarities and differences. For example, a student might say or write: “Malnutrition and hunger are similar because both deal with not having enough food and both can be experienced by human beings and animals. They are different because you can suffer from malnutrition without being hungry at the moment, and many people experience hunger but are not malnourished; malnutrition is much more serious than hunger.”

• Using acronyms to help students remember vocabulary terms. For example, “UG spreads” explains the 2 common traits of all cancers—Uncontrolled Growth and the migration from the original site to other sites.

1 Postman, Neil (1996) The End of Education, Vintage Books, Random House, New York NY pg. 123.2 Armbruster, Lehr, and Osborn, 2001, p. 273 McLaughlin, B, August, D, Snow, C. Carlo M, Dressler, C, White, C., Lively T., &Lippman, D. (2000, April). Vocabulary improvement and reading in English language learners: An intervention study. Paper presented at a research symposium of the Office of Bilingual Education and Minority Language Affairs, U.S. Department of Education, Washington, D.C.


• Assigning “old” words to be studied along with the new ones—and including some “old” words on every quiz or test.

• Using games in spare minutes to solidify words. Some examples are

The $100,000 Pyramid where a student clue-giver names words until his teammates figure out the category.

Pictionary where two students make drawings of each of a cluster of words until their team guesses the words.

Mile a Minute where a student “talker” is given a list of words in a certain category (e.g., terms related to cancer) and describes the words without naming the terms, category, or a rhyming word until the group gets the whole list and the category or runs out of time.

Charades where a student or pair or group acts out a term until the whole group correctly identifies it.

• Providing opportunities for students to read about the term in multiple

contexts. For example, “dementia” as used in health care refers to many different conditions. Assign readings in health care textbooks, trade journals, etc. and the general press that discuss one or more of these conditions or dementia as an overall descriptor. Then have students compare their findings in discussions of the similarities and differences between the conditions described in health care literature and those described in the general press.

How to assess selected vocabulary terms

Assessment of student understanding of key trade vocabulary is a must. The type of assessment you use is your professional choice, and there are many examples in chapter 5. However, you might want to consider another factor in choosing a vocabulary assessment and that is how the students will use the terms.

There are two ways that we all use words: recognition and expression. The first, recognition, includes the words we rarely if ever actually use in speaking or writing, but we do recognize them and remember their meaning when we read or hear them. The second and much smaller group of terms we know are those we actually use in speaking or writing.

These two types of words, you might consider using two different assessments:

For recognition vocabulary, you can use a paper and pencil test with multiple choice, matching, or fill-in-the-blank questions (given a list of possible words). Using this type of test certainly lets you know whether or not the student has mastered a TAR item related to term understanding. It is also good preparation for the vocabulary section of certification exams.

For vocabulary that students must be able to use and apply correctly, you can


show students a material or tool (e.g. autoclave, sharp, etc.) or a process (e.g., putting in position—Prone, Trendelendberg, Semi-flowers, Sims, Lithotomy, Supine, etc.) and ask them to identify the term, its meaning, and how it is used; they should not have a list of words to choose from; or

simply ask them to identify the tools, materials, and processes by name as they demonstrate a TAR skill to you. Using this type of assessment is an important preparation for the workplace.


Have you taught trade vocabulary successfully?

Assessing your own effectiveness is a little difficult at first, but good teachers do it all the time. The key question is this: How can we determine whether or not our instruction was as good as possible?

Here are some measures you might consider:

• How well the students do on your recognition and use tests;• How quickly students master the material and skills;• How often you have to review content and skills because students haven’t mastered basic

terminology, and• How many mistakes students make in TAR skill demonstration because they didn’t

understand key terms.

You will probably think of others as you get used to reflecting on your own instructional effectiveness.


job corps academic standards implementation...

Documents