Building Student’s Vocabulary

Chapter 8 of Content Area Reading looks at developing a student’s vocabulary. Vacca, Vacca, and Mraz write “teaching words well means giving students multiple opportunities to develop word meanings and learn how words are conceptually related to one another in the texts they are studying” (CAR, 235).

 

Why is this important? Why do students need to have a better vocabulary?

 

To improve their reading comprehension. If students know the words they are reading on the page then their reading comprehension will improve.

 

However, how do we as teachers define vocabulary?

 

There are three distinct types:

• General – everyday words with well known meanings
• Special – words from general vocabulary that take on specialized meanings when adapted to different content areas
• Technical – words that are only used/applied in one specific area

 

To teach vocabulary it is important to know when to preface a reading and teach certain words, when to give a list of words for students to keep in mind during their reading, and to have a list of words students should discuss after reading.

 

To begin this process it is vital we look at the term “concept.” Many students learn in terms of concepts and every concept has its own hierarchy of relationships. To teach a concept it is helpful to look at this hierarchy of relationships, oftentimes through a graphic organizer.

 

To create a graphic organizer that explains the hierarchical relationships of a concept it is helpful to follow the following six steps:

1. Analyze the vocabulary and list the important/key words
2. Arrange the list of words in terms of a hierarchy from most important to related
3. Add in example words for your vocabulary list that you believe the students already know to help clue them into the meanings
4. Evaluate the organizer and make sure the relationships are correct
5. Discuss the graphic organizer with the class before doing a learning task
6. After learning task relate discussion back to graphic organizer and add more words if needed

 

However, before graphic organizers can be used in the class it is helpful to work with students before learning new vocabulary to activate their prior knowledge. Have them write on what they already know about the words with Word Exploration activities. Put the students in groups and have them brainstorm related words to the given vocabulary words.

 

If there is one word in particular that stands as a word beneficial for the student’s long term vocabulary, have them work with that one word. Have them categorize it, define it in their own words, brainstorm their own comparisons, illustrate what they think it is like, anything really that gets them using their own words/experiences to learn this new word will help commit it to their long term memory.

 

Other activities for long term memory include:

• Semantic Feature Analysis – create a chart of similar words and have students determine which properties go with which word and which words have overlapping properties
• Categorization Activities – create activities to help students explore the relationships between words
• Concept Circles – help students describe a concept by looking at relationships of concepts in circle

 

However, when faced with an unknown word while reading it is helpful if students have activities they can use to help unpack an unfamiliar word. Helping them learn how to use context, word structure, and the dictionary will help students learn unfamiliar words on their own.

 

Context offers three clues that will help students learn an unfamiliar word. The first clue is typographic and this clue can be found in footnotes, italics, bold, parenthetical explanations, pictures, graphs, etc. They are the visual aids included in text books meant to help explain an important concept, and teaching your students how to use these helpful clues will improve their reading comprehension. The second and third clues are syntactic and semantic clues – the clues hidden within the text. Learning how to unpack a sentence and write it in the most basic words will help student discover the meaning of words they don’t understand.

 

Word Structure can help students decipher an unfamiliar word too. The smallest unit of words, morphemes, will help students predict the meaning of a word. Teaching your students about well known morphemes, suffixes and prefixes, compound words, etc. will help prepare students to figure out a word while reading.

 

Finally teaching students how to use a dictionary may seem trivial, but most students don’t know how to approach the dictionary. Emphasizing the “best-fit” option for definitions will help students find the correct definition they are looking for in relation to what they are reading (a relation that can be helped by knowing the context of what they are reading.) it is important when asking students to use a dictionary for an assignment to use it sparingly. Have the students learn a few big concept words really well instead of overwhelming them with every descriptor word you can think of. (And a helpful side note is to teach students about the pronunciation keys and how to decipher the symbols and translate them into sounds.)

 

Vocabulary may seem like a trivial, memorize and go topic, but vocabulary is vital for a student’s reading comprehension. The better their vocabulary – the better their reading comprehension – the more they learn!

Twofold Literacy

The two pieces we read for this week’s post were chapter ten of Content Area Reading by Vacca, Vacca, and Mraz called “Studying Text” and an article by Alan M. Frager and Elizabeth A. Frye called “Focus on the Essentials of Reading Instruction.” Both readings focused on the literacy of a student in a classroom. And both took on the two different sides to literacy: one the student’s side and one the teacher’s side.

The chapter took on how students study a text. If students do not know how to study a text, then their literacy will not be the best it can be. Students need to be equipped with the right tools to tackle a text if we teachers want them to learn from the text. This chapter argues that studying texts help students “make connections and think more deeply about ideas encountered in reading” (CAR, 317). However, students need to have reasons to study the text like acquiring knowledge, organizing/summarizing/using information and ideas, etc. And texts can offer several benefits to students like reflective thinking, self-directed study, hard work, and smart work.

A student’s work is directly related to the structure of the text. Texts include two types of features that aid this process:

1. External – format features, organizational aids
2. Internal – text patterns which revolve around:

• Description = information about topic
• Sequence = putting the information into a logical sequence
• Comparison and Contrast = point out similarities/differences about topic
• Cause and Effect = show how information originates and informs other information
• Problem and Solution – show development of problem and list solutions.

These text structures are usually recognized by signal words/phrases such as: to begin with, now, as, before, however, but, as well as, because, since, therefore, etc.

Along with linguistic pieces, students can use the visual aids within texts to help study. Graphics organizers are the best examples of these visual aids because they help learners comprehend and retain textually important information. Most often these graphic organizers reflect the text patterns and more often than not they can be used to revolve around questions students either have or should be aware of. Examples of graphic organizers include: word maps, semantic webs, flowcharts, and tree diagrams (CAR, 324).

Another tool students can use to study texts are written summaries. Writing summaries is a great activity for students because it teaches the students how to discern and analyze the text structure. A great example of a writing summary activity is GRASP or guided reading and summarizing procedure. GRASP happens as follows: teacher selects a passage, students read passage silently, students recite information they believe to be important, teacher writes information on the board, students re-read passage, class discusses list and adds/subtracts information.

The last tool is note taking. Now most people are very familiar with this tool, but unfortunately most students do not know the most effective means of note taking. Note taking is all about paraphrasing, summarizing, reacting critically, questioning, and responding personally to a text. It is not about copying down word for word a definition or other important concept. Most forms of note taking happen in reading logs, T-notes, cornell notes, and text annotations.

Text annotations address four types of notes:

1. Summary – condensing of main ideas
2. Thesis – addressing what main point of piece is
3. Critical – captures reader’s response
4. Question – looking at what the student thinks after reading

If students can learn these few tricks to studying a text then their literacy will improve.

However, it is not only up to the student. The second reading, the article “Focus on the Essentials of Reading Instruction,” addresses the teacher’s side of literacy in a classroom. Frager and Frye provide a rubric for teachers and evaluates how teachers are addressing literacy. They believe that there is a gap in between education classes where literacy is crucial to instruction and student teaching where literacy is optional. Their grades range from F to A just like any other rubric and are explained as follows:

F = Teacher reads entire text aloud or uses round robin reading techniques. Teachers focus on reading for information and ignores reading for meaning.

C = Teachers assign students to read texts silently and then immediately asks questions about what they read. This is problematic because either the books assigned are too difficult/too easy and the students do not know how to read to generate good answers to any questions the teacher might ask.

B = Teacher designs B-D-A reading activities (Before-During-After) to motivate students, activate prior knowledge, introduce new vocabulary, and develop awareness of questions/issues/debates.

B+ = Teacher is gradually releasing responsibility to the students.

A = Teacher continues to build on principles of good reading instruction, pushes personal meaning, and has high-quality discussion.

A+ = Teacher engages in critical literacy which means they are mindful of students’ lives, have a broad definition of text, ask provocative discussion questions, and encourage opportunities to reflect.