Kevin Flanigan, Ph.D.

West Chester Universitykflanigan@wcupa.edu

AgendaPrinciples and Components of Effective

Vocabulary InstructionVocabulary Strategies

Research-basedInstructional “bang for your buck”

Questions

Relationship between Vocabulary and ComprehensionVocabulary knowledge is one of the strongest

predictors of reading comprehension (Anderson & Freebody, 1981; Davis, 1941)

Vocabulary instruction has a strong relation to text comprehension (McKeown, Beck, Omanson, & Perfetti, 1983)

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Vocabulary of a high school graduate? College graduate?High school graduate? 25,000 – 50,000 words (Nagy & Anderson,

1984)College graduate ? 60 – 75,000 words (Crystal, 1995)

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The mathematics of vocabulary instructionLake Wobegon School District 20 words per week X 36 weeks per year 720 words per yearX 13 years 9,360 wordsUh oh . . . .

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3 General Components of Vocabulary Instruction(Templeton, Bear, Invernizzi, & Johnston, 2009)

Overall Context (reading, writing, rich discussion)

Direct Vocabulary InstructionWord-specific (teaching specific words)Generative (teaching how words work)

Word Consciousness – a positive attitude and disposition toward learning words

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Have you ever?/Word Wizard(Beck, McKeown, & Kucan, 2002)Purpose: to connect new words to known

concepts and encourage students to notice examples of words in contexts outside of school (or outside of “formal instruction”)

Procedure:Choose Tier Two words and ask students to

bring back examples from home (“I saw a radiant sunset last night!”).

For each word used, the student, group, or class earns a points toward class competition and/or grade, extra credit.

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Let’s try itAgog – very excited; impatiently eager“While waiting for the train to take him

home, the soldier was agog about his homecoming.”

Saturnine – sullen, gloomy, depressed“The teacher’s saturnine demeanor put a

damper on any joy or excitement among the children.”

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Two Points!When I found out we were going to have our

third child, I was agog! However, after I calculated the number of diapers that would need changing over the course of three years, I became slightly saturnine.

Principles of Vocabulary Instruction(Blachowicz & Fisher, 2000)The students should:Be ACTIVE and ENGAGED in developing their

understanding of words and ways to learn them.PERSONALIZE word learning.Be IMMERSED in words (listening, speaking, reading,

writing).REPEATEDLY experience words across a VARIETY OF

RICH CONTEXTS.Learn new words/concepts by RELATING them to existing

words/concepts.Learn both SPECIFIC WORDS and strategies for

INDEPENDENT word learning.

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Word WizardList students’ names on board in classroomStudents earn points for bringing examples of

words “from the world” back to classTo earn a point, student must demonstrate

knowledge of the word’s meaning – “Dad, this boy in our class is SO supercilious.”

How were YOU taught Vocabulary?

Clue Review Word BankExample

zealous tangible strut

agog saturnine dote

harmony stroll swagger

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Clue Review/TabooPurpose – to review concepts repeatedly,

actively, across a range of contextsProcedure

Concept/words are written on cards.Pairs – (a) clue giver, (b) clue detective.Clue detective places card on his forehead, so

she can’t see it, but clue giver can see it.Clue giver provides clues to clue detective for

each word.Pairs switch roles.

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Clue ReviewTips

Can’t do “sounds like Nunion!”Definition/clue must relate to essential

elements of that word/concept (For George Washington, can’t say, “Dude with the wig!”).

Pair up ELL and native language speakers. Native language speaker can be first clue giver to provide a language model for ELL.

Use word bank as scaffold.

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Clue ReviewSwitch pairs to hear multiple ways of defining

the same word/concept.Taboo tournament!Every student in class is actively engaged

100% of the time. Homework assignment with parents/siblings.Collect words on rings, in soap dishes,

baggies, in notebooks, or coffee cans.

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Applause, Applause(Beck, McKeown, & Kucan, 2002)

Clap to indicate how much you would like to be described as:

Saturnine?A doting mom, dad, aunt, sister? Compassionate?A GADFLY?

Thumbs up/thumbs down(Beck, McKeown, & Kucan, 2002)

Would a tough drill sergeant dote on his soldiers?

Is a car tangible? Is love tangible?

Word Associations(Beck, McKeown, & Kucan, 2002)

Which word goes with a model walking down the runway? Why?

Which word goes with a bully? Why?Which word goes with a grandparent giving

their grandchildren all the candy they can eat? Why?

Sentence Expansion (Santa, Havens, & Valdes, 2004)

PurposeTo expand/extend vocabulary into writingExcellent revision strategy/use with “cemetery

words”Procedure

On strips of paper, write Boring Sentences such as “The boy ate his ice cream.”

In pairs, students rewrite the sentence with more precise vocabulary such as, “The famished boy devoured his double chocolate scoop cone.”

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The man went to the party.

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Music Puzzler(Townsend, 2009)

Write down your favorite song(s). Use the target words this week to describe

your favorite songs. Does your song make you want to strut or

swagger? Why/why not? Does it make you feel saturnine or agog?

Why/why not? Does it give you a feeling of harmony?

Picture Puzzler for “tangible”(Townsend, 2009)

Picture PuzzlerPresent a picture(s) to the students that is

somehow related to the target word. Ask students to write in their vocabulary

notebooks how they think the picture is related to the word’s meaning. Write-pair-share.

Students share with entire class. Teacher clarifies misconceptions.

Excellent assessment of student understanding of word.

Concept Sorts (with power thinking)

Take any set of concepts, vocabulary words, sentences, story events, and mix them up!

Students must reorganize them.Promotes understanding of the “pieces” and

how the pieces “relate” to each other – the structure.

Cramming on the Farm

Selected Resources Beck, Isabel L., McKeown, Margaret G., and Kucan, Linda.

Bringing Words to Life: Robust Vocabulary Instruction. New York: Guilford, 2002.

Nagy, W.E., & Anderson, R.C. (1984). How many words are there in printed school English? Reading Research Quarterly, 19(3), 304– 330.

Santa, C.M., Havens, L.T., & Valdes, B.J. (2004). Project CRISS: Creating Independence through student-owned strategies (3rd edition). Dubuque, IA: Kendall/Hunt.

Templeton, S., Bear, D., Invernizzi, M., & Johnston, F. (2010). Vocabulary their way: Word study with middle and secondary students. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.