Specified Vocabulary Instruction & Writing Development

By: Ibrahim Hussein,

Katelyn Kahookele,

Alison Wangen,

and Elizabeth Harder

Low Socioeconomic Status Vocabulary Instruction

1. Acknowledge students’ cultural and linguistic heritages

• SES students' self-esteem is strengthened when they see and read about the contributions made by their own racial or ethnic groups to world history.

• SES students are likely to associate with various ethnic groups, specifically African, Hispanic, and Native American.

• SES Students can read about their own culture and the cultures of their classmates to further comprehension gain of target vocabulary words.

• Personalized Guided Reading (A low SES student may grow up in a family where the women typically cook all the meals. A book about making grandma's famous salsa would trigger the student's previous experience of watching his/her mother cooking while adding to the students' exposure to words like 'eat', 'in', and 'goes' that he or she may see in other texts daily.)

2. Embed phonological awareness

• Power Words (Words that are important to know to understand the text. Words are represented in contextual sentences, illustrations, and pronunciations.)

• Vocabulary Quilt (A paper 'quilt' used to organize ideas of what the student already knows and what he or she will learn about a specific group of vocabulary words that are selected by the teacher based on their importance in a piece of text)

Low Socioeconomic Status Vocabulary Instruction (Cont.)

3. Provide a variety of language experiences • Rote drill and practice are boring and lack meaning for young people, especially for children; real-life

experiences are much more engaging.• Vocabulary field trip (If your class is reading about Braille, and none of the students use braille to

learn, taking a ‘vocabulary field trip’ to visit someone in the school who is blind will give the students real-world exposure to their vocabulary word)

4. Foster word consciousness• For low SES students, the traditional focus on individual word knowledge should be shifted to the

development of word consciousness—a fascination with new words that prompts ongoing student inquiry and exploration (Graves 2006).

• Personal Glossary (A place for students to keep definitions, illustrations, and sentences of words they find interesting during reading practice)

Low Socioeconomic Status Writing Development

1. Provide culturally relevant instructional materials that recognize, incorporate, and reflect students' heritage.• Low SES students benefit from scaffolding that links the curriculum to the cultural resources that

students bring to school• Low SES students need more flexibility and choice to sustain engagement

• SES students can select texts that incorporate the perspectives, voices, historical events, poetry, artwork, journals, and illustrations of their culture or a culture that interests them.

• Graphic Organizers (A visual summary created as students describe information. To most SES students, GOs introduce them to the idea of a beginning a process which is important to writing.)

• Weekly Interviews (Students interview a parent, guardian, sibling, or adult of choice weekly. Interview topics range from their culture, poetry, music, recipes, novels, and heroes. The student can videotape, audiotape, or write the interview and share it with the rest of the class.)

Gifted and Talented Vocabulary Instruction

• Gifted students refers to students having an intellectual ability that are relatively higher than average. It is imperative to differentiate between a gift and a skill in the sense that skills refers to acquired or learned behaviors. Gifts, like talents, are often inherent and cannot be acquired using personal effort. Teaching gifted students about vocabulary isn’t that hard as a teacher we need to help our students learn to explore the depth and complexity of words.

• Introduce a word and determine a definition or description with the student.

• Ask the student to find synonyms and antonyms for each word on the list. This will challenge the student.

• Have the student act out word meanings to activate their technical memory. As you already know gifted students get bored easily but the more you challenge them the more they will learn.

• Ask the students to restate or explain the new word in their own words so that they understand their new vocab word.

• Ask the student to engage in activities to deepen their knowledge of the new vocab word. Now with all of these steps the student will have more knowledge.

Gifted and Talented Writing Development• Writing will come easy if the student already has its vocabulary base built. Gifted students only need permission

because gifted students come to class with amazing abilities; they have minds full of imaginative ideas and with writing that is first thing you need.

• Ask the students if they have an idea to write about, Ideas are all around us. You might draw inspiration from a routine, an everyday situation or a childhood memory.

• Ask the students to build on that idea to make a story. Now that you have your plan and you’re ready to start writing. Remember, this is your first rough draft.

• Forget about word count and grammar. Don’t worry if you stray off topic in places. Just write what you have in mine.

• Now that you have finished writing your story it’s time to revision, this is when you add or rearrange words.

• After doing all of that work it’s time to edit, where you check for clarity, grammar, spelling and punctuation. When you are done with all of this, it’s time to send your writing.

English Language Learners Vocabulary/Writing Instruction

• Academic Development• When teaching ELL students new vocabulary terms and developmental ways to produce proficient writing

there are two very important strategies that teachers need to keep in mind. These two strategies are listed below. They do require a fair amount of time for students to really grasp and understand how to build on the new developmental skills, especially if they are only proficient in their non-English language.

1) Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills (BICS)

• BICS primarily involves using language for the everyday face-to-face encounters all children will experience. This strategy type provides lots of clues within the text that make it easy for students to understand the material. (Takes 0-2 years to acquire)

2) Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency (CALP)• CALP focuses more on the language skills and specific functions for both academic and cognitive natures.

(Takes about 7-10 years to acquire)

English Language Learners Vocabulary Instruction

• Teaching Vocabulary• Typically ELL students will bring forth content language and previously gained knowledge from their native countries. It is important for teachers to prepare

lesson plans that will make connections to what the students already know and what they will be learning next.

• There are several techniques that should be considered when working with ELL students who are proficient in only one language, other than English.

• Flashcards (displaying only one word at a time, also associated with the object/image)

• Match-up cards

• Illustrated books (leveled for each child)

• Word webs

• 4-corners vocabulary

• Word Sorts (categorizing vocabulary terms help build recognition ability at a quicker pace)

• Personal Dictionaries

• Audio/video that builds word knowledge

• Studies have shown that multimedia exposure is a great way for English language learners to gain a deeper understanding of vocabulary terms. Using images and sound to build word knowledge is key when working with these students.

Building Vocabulary Knowledge

English Language Learners Writing Development

• Teaching Writing Strategies• Building background knowledge is an essential step in developing writing. In order to produce an

established piece of writing, ELL students need to develop a clear understanding of words and their meaning (vocabulary).

• Implementing Writing Strategies• Students learning English need the opportunity to use English. Time each day to practice hearing, seeing,

speaking, reading and writing words will help to format multiple words into structured sentences.• Word work each day is very important

• Word sorts/clusters teach students how to group words together that have similar meaning and connection. This will be very helpful when formatting words together in a sentence.

Special Education Vocabulary Instruction

1. Have a structured and organized method to the words presented• Vocabulary retention with be increased when targeted words are presented with related

group words. This strategy will allow special education students to decipher the connection between the set of grouped vocabulary words.

2. Displaying vocabulary definitions visible at all times• Special education students need to have definitions visible during the day in order to

increase exposure and deep understanding. If the definitions are posted students would be able to think about them when viewing them and use the words accurately. No matter what words are being taught all vocabulary words need to be displayed. Displaying multiple students’ words will promote intrinsic motivation to develop and understanding of more words.

Special Education Vocabulary Instruction (Cont.)

3. Give students credit when they locate the targeted vocabulary word within any given text

• This strategy will motivate students to locate the vocabulary word in order to get attention from peers along with the instructor. Students may also apply the word with correct context in order to get this recognition for using the vocabulary word.

4. Demonstration of vocabulary word by instructors

• When adults working with the special education students use the targeted words in simplified context for the students to recognize this allows additional exposure for the students to deepen their understanding of the vocabulary word.

Special Education Writing Development

• Research supports that a collective strategies increases writing development within special education students. These three writing strategies include:1) Sentence expansion

• Within this strategy, students are expected to write a part of a sentence that only contains a verb and a subject (Sam swam). Once the student identifies those two aspects they are then prompted to supply the sentence part with other identifying elements such as: who, what, when, where, and why.

2) Sentence combining• This strategy helps special education students acknowledge that longer sentences can be formed

from two smaller ones. This method supplies the students with the ability to prolong their sentences without them becoming run-on sentences.

Special Education Writing Development (Cont.)

3) Instructing sentences within paragraph layout

• This strategy supplies the students with the knowledge of a the use of sentence placement. The students will analyze paragraphs and learn that beginning sentences are namely called introductory sentences, sentences that are typically located within the paragraph itself are known as the body sentences of a paragraph, and the last sentences are called concluding sentences.

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