Vocabulary: Part 4: Teaching Strategies

How Do I Teach Vocabulary?

Indirect Vocabulary Instruction:
First, read aloud to your students, no matter what grade you teach. Students of all ages can learn words from hearing texts of various kinds read to them. Reading aloud works best when you discuss the selection before, during, and after you read. Talk with students about new vocabulary and concepts and help them relate the words to their prior knowledge and experiences.

Second, encourage students to read extensively on their own. Maintain your instructional reading; but, encourage your students to read more outside of school and on their own during independent work time.

Specific Word Instruction:
Specific word instruction, or teaching individual words, can deepen students' knowledge of word meanings. How is this done?
1. Teach specific words before reading.
2. Teach specific words as they occur during guided reading.
3. Go back into text after reading to identify words that need to be clarified.
4. Assist children to make connections between the new words and their prior knowledge.
5. Extend instruction to promote active engagement with new words.
6. Provide repeated exposure to vocabulary in many contexts.

Video Teaching Examples:

	Watch a VIDEO CLIP (click here)
	Description: Angi does a vocabulary lesson with her kindergarten children in the context of the big book. First, she helps the children sound out the word “ripened.” They get as far as “ripe” and she tells them the end. This is a good strategy when working with young children who may not have long attention spans. Then she asks them what it means.

Watch a VIDEO CLIP (click here)

Description: Angi does a word sort with nouns and adjectives from The Little Mouse, the Red Ripe Strawberry, and the Big Hungry Bear. Notice how versatile word sorts can be. Here she expands her students’ understanding of grammar and vocabulary by focusing upon nouns and adjectives. Before, she looked at spelling patterns. Notice that the book she has in her lap is a standard size version of the big book. These smaller copies will be used for individuals to take back to their seats or home to practice the story. When the children seem unsure, she reads them the sentence to provide context clues. They figure it out together.

Watch a VIDEO CLIP (click here)

Description: Heather interrupts her reading to discuss the meaning of the word “dumbfounded” with her class. This impromptu vocabulary lesson helped her students understand the story as they were reading it. Teachers can also pre-teach vocabulary that they think might cause difficulty for their students or wait and teach the vocabulary afterwards, perhaps focusing upon words the students didn’t know. Pitfalls with pre-teaching vocabulary are that children who already know the words may be bored or you may not guess the correct words that need to be pre-taught. A pitfall of waiting until afterwards is that comprehension may be hindered if they don’t know critical words.

Word Learning Strategies: It is not possible for teachers to provide specific instruction for all the words their students do not know. Therefore, students also need to be able to determine the meaning of words that are new to them but not taught directly to them. They need to develop effective word-learning strategies. Word-learning strategies include:
1. Using dictionaries and other reference aids to learn or reinforce knowledge of word meanings. The most helpful dictionaries include sentences providing clear examples of word meanings in context.
2. Using information about word parts to figure out the meanings of words. Knowing some common prefixes and suffixes (affixes), base words, and root words can help students learn the meanings of many new words. For example, if students learn just the four most common prefixes in English (un-, re-, in-, dis-), they will have important clues about the meaning of about two thirds of all English words that have prefixes. Learning suffixes can be more challenging than learning prefixes. This is because some suffixes have more abstract meanings than do prefixes. For example, learning that the suffix -ness means "the state or quality of" might not help students figure out the meaning of kindness. ?
3. Using context clues to determine word meanings. Context clues are hints about the meaning of an unknown word that are provided in the words, phrases, and sentences that surround the word. Context clues include definitions, restatements, examples, or descriptions. Because students learn most word meanings indirectly, or from context, it is important that they learn to use context clues effectively.

	Watch a VIDEO CLIP (click here)
	Description: Heather is doing a mini-lesson on root words and suffixes. She pre-teaches the concept in preparation for the next week’s spelling lesson.

Teaching Word Analogies: Word analogies are a method of teaching children to pronounce and decode unknown words. After they can pronounce the word, they may or may not need instruction on what the word means. Teachers who use word analogies teach a set of words that represent common vowel-consonant clusters. Then the children are directed to find the spelling pattern that relates to an unknown word or words.

Here is an example:
The word is recorder
You know “re” so that must be “re.”
You know “or” so that must be “cor.”
You know “her” so that must be “der.”
Put it together and you get “re-cor-der”—“recorder.”
For more on this technique, see the Benchmark School Word Identification Program: http://www.benchmarkschool.org/b_available_programs.htm.

What words should I teach? You will probably to be able to teach thoroughly only a few new words (perhaps eight or ten) per week, so you need to choose the words you teach carefully. Focus on teaching these types of words:

Important words: When you teach words before students read a text, directly teach those words that are important for understanding a concept or the text, especially those that do not have useful context clues.

Useful words: Teach words that students are likely to see and use again and again. For example, it is probably more useful for students to learn the word fragment than the word fractal; likewise, the word revolve is more useful than the word gyrate.

Difficult words: Provide some instruction for words that are particularly difficult for your students.

Words with multiple meanings: Looking up words with multiple meanings in the dictionary can be confusing for students. Model for them how to determine which definition fits the passage. Also there are two specific types of words with multiple meanings you need to teach students:

1. Words that are spelled the same but are pronounced differently, e.g. sow (a female pig) or sow (to plant seeds); bow (a knot with loops) or bow (the front of a ship).

2. Words that are spelled and pronounced the same, but have different meanings, e.g. mail (letters, cards, and packages) or mail (a type of armor); ray (a narrow beam of light) or ray (a type of fish) or ray (part of a line).

Idiomatic expressions also can be difficult for students, especially for students whose first language is not English. Because idiomatic expressions do not mean what the individual words usually mean, you often will need to explain to students expressions such as "hard hearted," "a chip off the old block," "drawing a blank," or "get the picture."

How well do my students need to "know" vocabulary words? Students do not either know or not know words: Rather, they know words to varying degrees. These three levels of word knowledge are:
1. Unknown— The word is completely unfamiliar and it’s meaning is unknown.
2. Acquainted— The word is somewhat familiar; the student has some idea of its basic meaning.
3. Established— The word is very familiar; the student can immediately recognize its meaning and use the word correctly in his/her own speech and writing.

As they read, students can usually get by with some words at the unknown or acquainted levels. If they are to understand the text fully; however, they need to have an established level of knowledge for most of the words that they read.

Are there different types of word learning? If so, are some types of learning more difficult than others? Four different kinds of word learning have been identified:

1. learning a new meaning for a known word;
2. learning the meaning for a new word representing a known concept;
3. learning the meaning of a new word representing an unknown concept; and
4. clarifying and enriching the meaning of a known word.

These types vary in difficulty. One of the most common, yet challenging, is the third type: learning the meaning of a new word representing an unknown concept. Much of learning in the content areas involves this type of word learning. As students learn about deserts, hurricanes, and immigrants, they may be learning both new concepts and new words. Learning words and concepts in science, social studies, and mathematics is even more challenging because each major concept often is associated with many other new concepts. For example, the concept of deserts is often associated with other concepts that may be unfamiliar, such as cactus, plateau, and mesa.

What else can I do to help my students develop vocabulary? Another way you can help your students develop vocabulary is to foster word consciousness—an awareness of and interest in words, their meanings, and their power. Word-conscious students know many words and use them well. They enjoy words, are eager to learn new words, and know how to learn them.

You can help your students develop word consciousness in several ways. Call their attention to the way authors choose words to convey particular meanings. Encourage students to play with words by engaging in word play, such as puns or palindromes. Help them research a word's origin or history. You can also encourage them to search for examples of a word's usage in their everyday lives. -from Put Reading First: http://www.nifl.gov/partnershipforreading/publications/reading_first1vocab.html

Have fun with the following examples:
Can you read this right the first time?
1. The bandage was wound around the wound.
2. The farm was used to produce produce.
3. The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.
4. We must polish the Polish furniture.
5. He could lead if he would get the lead out.
6. The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert
7. Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present.
8. A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum.
9. When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.
10. I did not object to the object.
11. The insurance was invalid for the invalid.
12. There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row.
13. They were too close to the door to close it.
14. The buck does funny things when the does are present.
15. A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line.
16. To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow
17. The wind was too strong to wind the sail.
18. Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear.
19. I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.
20. How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?

Let's face it - English is a crazy language. There is no egg in eggplant, nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple. English muffins weren't invented in England or French fries in France. Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren't sweet, are meat. We take English for granted. But if we explore its paradoxes, we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig. And why is it that writers write but fingers don't fing, grocers don't groce and hammers don't ham? If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn't the plural of booth, beeth? One goose 2 geese. So one moose 2 meese? One index 2 indices? Doesn't it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend? If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it? If teachers taught, why didn't preachers praught? If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat? Sometimes I think all the English speakers should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane. In what language do people recite at a play and play at a recital? Ship by truck and send cargo by ship? Have noses that run and feet that smell? How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites? You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in which your house can burn up as it burns down, in which you fill in a form by filling it out and in which, an alarm goes off by going on. English was invented by people, not computers, and it reflects the creativity of the human race, which, of course, is not a race at all. That is why, when the stars are out, they are visible, but when the lights are out, they are invisible. (source unknown)

There is a two-letter word that perhaps has more meanings than any other two-letter word, and that is "UP."

It's easy to understand UP, meaning toward the sky or at the top of the list, but when we awaken in the morning, why do we wake UP? At a meeting, why does a topic come UP? Why do we speak UP and why are the officers UP for election and why is it UP to the secretary to write UP a report? We call UP our friends. And we use it to brighten UP a room, polish UP the silver, we warm UP the leftovers and clean UP the kitchen. We lock UP the house and some guys fix UP the old car. At other times the little word has real special meaning. People stir UP trouble, line UP for tickets, work UP an appetite, and think UP excuses. To be dressed is one thing but to be dressed UP is special. And this UP is confusing: A drain must be opened UP because it is stopped UP. We open UP a store in the morning but we close it UP at night. We seem to be pretty mixed UP about UP! To be knowledgeable about the proper uses of UP, look the word UP in the dictionary. In a desk-sized dictionary, it takes UP almost 1/4th of the page and can add UP to about thirty definitions. If you are UP to it, you might try building UP a list of the many ways UP is used. It will take UP a lot of your time, but if you don't give UP, you may wind UP with a hundred or more. When it threatens to rain, we say it is clouding UP. When the sun comes out we say it is clearing UP. When it rains, it wets the earth and often messes things UP. When it doesn't rain for a while, things dry UP. One could go on and on, but I'll wrap it UP, for now my time is UP!