RobustVocabularyInstruction < Kitchen

26 Jul 2006 - 16:01

Robust Vocabulary Instruction

from the Introduction to Chapter 4 Comprehension of the National Reading Panel report:

The importance of vocabulary in reading achievement has been recognized for more than half a century. As early as 1925, in the National Society for Studies in Education (NSSE) Yearbook, this quotation appears:

Growth in reading power means, therefore, continuous enriching and enlarging of the reading vocabulary and increasing clarity of discrimination in appreciation of word values (Whipple, 1925, p. 76).

Even today, evidence of the importance of vocabulary is usually attributed to Davis (1942), who presented evidence that comprehension comprised two “skills”: word knowledge or vocabulary and reasoning in reading. The Panel reflects this position with the inclusion of the current analysis of research on vocabulary instruction with the other comprehension research analyses. Since Davis’ work, there have been questions regarding the “skills” perspective, but the finding that vocabulary is strongly related to comprehension seems unchallenged.

From Bringing Words to Life: Robust Vocabulary Instruction by Isabel L. Beck, Margaret G. McKeown, and Linda Kucan:

First-grade children from higher-SES groups knew about twice as many words as lower SES children (Graves, Brunetti, & Slater, 1982; Graves & Slater, 1987).

High school seniors near the top of their class knew about four times as many words as their lower-performing classmates (Smith, 1941).

High-knowledge third graders had vocabularies about equal to lowest-performing 12th graders (Smith, 1941).

do children learn vocabulary from context?

The answer is Yes, but —

Conventional wisdom suggests that the major means for developing students' vocabulary should focus on learning words in context. This position is based on three assumptions: First, words are learned from context. Second, school-age youngsters are successfully adding words to their vocabularies. And, third, instruction must focus on learning vocabulary from context because there are just too many words to teach to get the job done through direct instruction.

[snip]

Most of the words children customarily encounter in oral language beyond their earliest years, both at home and in school, are words that they already know. Thus, the source of later vocabulary learning shifts to written contexts—what children read. The problem is that it is not so easy to learn from written context. Written context lacks many of the features of oral language that support learning new word meanings, such as intonation, body language, and shared physical surroundings.
[snip]
Studies estimate that of 100 unfamiliar words met in reading, between 5 and 15 of them will be learned (Nagy, Herman, & Anderson, 1985; Swanborn & de Glopper, 1999).

[snip]

Specific estimates of vocabulary growth vary widely, from 3 (Joos, 1964) to 20 new words a day (Miller, 1978). A figure of 7 words per day is probably the most commonly cited....Although it may be the case that some students are learning as many as 7 new words a day, many others may be learning only 1 or 2, or indeed not any at all.

are there too many words to teach vocabulary directly?

Bringing Words to Life answers this question by pointing out that a mature reader's vocabulary falls into 3 tiers:

Tier 1: basic words like clock, baby, happy, walk that don't need to be taught

Tier 2: "words that are of high frequently for mature language users and are found across a variety of domains....coincidence, absurd, industrious, fortunate

Tier 3: low frequency words that are "often limited to specific domains" e.g.: isotope, lathe, peninsula, refinery

Obviously, Tier 2 words are the target of vocabulary instruction:

Nagy and Anderson estimate that good readers [in grades 3 through 9] read approximately 1 million words of text per year. They organized these words into word families, or groups of related words such as introduce, introduction, reintroduce, and introducing, and further estimate that half of the 88,500 word families they calculate to exist in printed school English are so rare that even avid readers may encounter them only once in their lifetime of reading. Using these figures, it seems reasonable to consider word families that would be encountered at least once every 10 years, which Nagy and Anderson calculate to number about 15,000 as comprising Tiers One and Two. These are words that occur once or more in 10 million running words of text. Our best estimate of Tier One, the most familiar words that need no instruction, is 8,000 words families...That leaves about 7,000 word families for Tier Two.
[snip]
Seven thousand words may still seem like quite a large number for instruction to undertake over the course of, say kindergarten through ninth grade. That would amount to an average of 700 words per year.
[snip]
[W]e assert that attention to a substantial portion of those words, say, an average of 400 per year, would make a significant congtribution to an individual's verbal functioning. Aiming for this number of words would allow the depth of instruction needed to affect students' text comprehension ability. We believe this to be the case because about 400 words per year conforms to the rate at which we taught words in our previous research, which resulted in improvements in word knowledge and in comprehension of texts containing the instructed words. (Beck et al., 1982).

quick notes

The Vocabulary Workshop series teaches 300 words per book.

I wonder whether teaching Latin & Greek roots increases the number of words students can pick up from context, as Eugene Schwartz and others argue. I'm guessing it probably does, but I don't know.

Beck's, McKeown's, & Kucan's figures make sense of my own life and times. Kris and I were talking about vocabulary & SAT scores yesterday, and I said, "How did I get a [recentered] 790 coming from the farm?" Kris said, "If you'd lived in an affluent suburb you could have picked up that extra 10 points." It seems obvious to me now that the way I did it was by learning huge numbers of words from context, which I could do because I was a compulsive reader from day one, which meant that I was exposed to zillions of words & then re-exposed to the same zillions of words often enough to learn a lot of them. (One of the words I learned, apparently, was "zillions.") On family vacations I used to walk along reading my book; as I recall, I missed most of Manhattan the one time we visited because I was reading Agatha Christie. Another data point: The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance, in an article on professional writers, says that professional writers universally describe themselves as "compulsve readers." Converging lines of evidence, that!

Vocabulary Workshop grades & levels
Fischgrund on divorce and SAT scores
how much reading a day?
robust vocabulary instruction (400 words a year)
15 new words a day
Engelmann says it's 3 new words a day

National Reading Panel
NICHD publications on reading
summary of NRP report
International Reading Association on NRP report

vocabularyworkshop robustvocabularyinstruction

-- CatherineJohnson - 26 Jul 2006

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"On family vacations I used to walk along reading my book; as I recall, I missed most of Manhattan the one time we visited because I was reading Agatha Christie."

I can remember reading while walking in Copenhagen. I must have been absorbed in the book (IIRC, it was about WWII fighter aces), because I also remember running into a lamppost that I hadn't noticed.

I still go almost nowhere with nothing to read, even if there is no reason to think I'll have time glance at a book. Of course, on vacation I take far more reading material than I can possibly get through. I wouldn't want to run out, you know.

8-)

-- DougSundseth - 26 Jul 2006

Several years ago, Kristy, our avid reader, was walking through the family room while reading a book. Not surprisingly, she tripped over something in the middle of the floor. We thought it was pretty funny.

-- KarenA - 26 Jul 2006

One of the many pleasures of reading is the connections that can be made. (Thanks for that observation, Captain Obvious.) Several years ago we were walking through the streets of lower Manhattan and happened to walk past the Fraunces Tavern on our way to Battery Park. Kristy knew about the tavern and its historical significance because of some book she had read (again, in 5th grade, if I recall). There is a small museum in the upstairs of the Tavern and she insisted that we go in--we spent almost two hours there!!

-- KarenA - 26 Jul 2006

I can remember reading while walking in Copenhagen.

hoo boy

regrets

I'm very glad I never walked through Copenhagen with my nose in a book

otoh, I'm walking through the rest of my life with my nose in a book....

-- CatherineJohnson - 26 Jul 2006

dittoheads!

-- CatherineJohnson - 26 Jul 2006

Karen

Is Kristy's vocabulary huge?

-- CatherineJohnson - 26 Jul 2006

"I missed most of Manhattan the one time we visited because I was reading Agatha Christie. "

I once figured out that according to the American psychologist's standard diagnostic manual I am addicted to mystery novels.

-- TracyW - 26 Jul 2006

"Is Kristy's vocabulary huge?"

Yes!! I think several factors have contributed to this. She is an avid reader, which certainly helps build that base of words. She has also had some pretty good direct instruction in vocabulary building as well. I personally think that the weekly spelling words can be used to build vocabulary, especially if there is a conscious effort to not just learn how to spell the words, but to learn definitions as well.

Kristy had a junior high school teacher who required her students to use their weekly spelling words in sentences, with the catch that the sentence had to define the word. That is, the meaning of the word had to be obvious from the sentence itself.

We are also a pretty verbal family. We talk--a lot--about all kinds of things, so I think that helps with vocab development as well.

Kristy is also a writer--so she is constantly needing to use words. I think this, in turn, helps to build vocabulary.

What's kind of interesting is that Megan is not an avid reader. She is a competent reader, but she doesn't read for pleasure the way that Kristy does. However, her vocabulary is also pretty big. She has also benefitted from some pretty good direct instruction as well.

One of my all-time favorite teacher stories involves Megan's sixth grade teacher, who was fabulous. The class was reading a book and they encountered the word "comeuppance." The teacher hadn't heard the word before, so she made a big deal about it. They looked the word up in the dictionary, and then the teacher proceeded to use the word in sentences for the next week or so. The teacher took great delight in learning this new word. My sentence was the Mae West line: "Why don't you comeuppance and see me sometime." Okay, so much for that attempt at humor.

Anyway, the teacher modeled the behavior that she wanted her students to have. You come across a word you don't know? Look it up and learn it, and then practice using the word.

While Megan isn't an avid reader, she is a bit of an eclectic reader. She loves reading Nickelodeon magazine and she enjoys reading the comics. However, her all-time favorite book ever is "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn." She saw "Big River" when she was in third grade, and was mesmerized by it. She can sing every song in the soundtrack from memory. But the musical piqued her interest in the book.

And, I also thought it was rather interesting that her favorite book from 7th grade was "Animal Farm." Her Reading teacher was fabulous--and she had the kids read that book the last several weeks of school. The teacher also did a great job of working with the kids to explain what was actually going on with the book.

But, because Megan isn't an avid reader, we have come up with other strategies to increase her vocabulary. In fourth grade, we started coming up with our own "joke of the day." It started with chicken jokes (long story), but what started as silliness evolved into a way to increase vocabulary and word comprehension in a fun way. She also likes to write, which I think in turns helps with vocabulary development.

We have also used rhymes and poetry (silly or fun poems) to build vocabulary.

Wow, that was a long answer to a simple question!

-- KarenA - 27 Jul 2006

Tracy

That's wonderful!

What I love about it is that addiction & compulsion are turning out to be biologically connected....in a curious & counterintuitive way....

It used to be that addiction and compulsions were seen as opposites: compulsives are tightly controlled, worried, over-cautious while addicts are impulsive, fearless, etc.

It's all a little too complicated to go into at the moment, but the new thinking about compulsives is that they are trying to reduce "uncertainty." That's what drives them to do the various compulsive things they do.

An addict, on the other hand, is out there CREATING uncertainty for people through his or her shenanigans.

I'm thinking that an addiction to reading mystery novels, which are all about reducing uncertainty (!), may be the perfect middle ground between the two poles.

-- CatherineJohnson - 27 Jul 2006

I personally think that the weekly spelling words can be used to build vocabulary, especially if there is a conscious effort to not just learn how to spell the words, but to learn definitions as well.

Absolutely!

I finally realized that mid-year, with Megawords. Megawords is, by definition, about spelling big words - well, big words are big words. They're the words not used in everyday conversation.

Each Megawords book has 5 to 8 lists of 100 - 111 words - at least 500 words a book!

The student doesn't learn all the words, but he or she does do about 15 pages of exercises using many of them in sentences. To learn a new word from context you need multiple exposures, so at a bare minimum MEGAWORDS is giving kids 2 or 3 exposures to new vocabulary words.

Any student would know a lot of the words in these lists, but certainly not all of them - which probably makes it more likely he'll learn the ones he doesn't.

I'm looking at the first list in the 7th grade book (Megawords 4). Of these words, I think Christopher may not know:

yonder
vapor
vigor
assessor
bursar
nectar
vulgar
haggard
scabbard

If he's learning 50 new words with each Megawords book and learning spelling & morpheme rules, that's a lot of bang for your buck.

-- CatherineJohnson - 27 Jul 2006

Anyway, the teacher modeled the behavior that she wanted her students to have. You come across a word you don't know? Look it up and learn it, and then practice using the word.

What a great story!

I'm increasing my own vocabulary now - for instance, I looked up the meaning of "plangent" this morning.

I think we encountered the word in PENROD.

-- CatherineJohnson - 27 Jul 2006

Whenever I see "plangent", I first read it as "Plantagenet". I'm sure this says something about me, but I'm not quite sure what.

-- DougSundseth - 27 Jul 2006

I too find that I am constantly trying to consciously increase my vocabulary. Sports Illustrated is great for this, by the way. When I come to a word that I don't know, I now write down the word and then look it up. While I can often figure out a general idea of the meaning of the word from the context, I wouldn't be able to specifically define the word, if asked.

I started sending a "joke of the day" to several teachers last year. The idea was to use the joke to increase vocabulary in some way. In other words, the jokes weren't random; there was always a purpose.

For example, on "National Talk Like a Pirate Day" our joke was: "How much does a pirate charge for corn?" Answer: A buccaneer (a buck an ear). Or, "What does a pirate say when his wooden leg gets cold?" Shiver my timbers.

The idea is to use the jokes to get the kids thinking about the words. Some of the kids didn't know what a buccaneer was. Well, then they just learned a new word. There's also a phonics component with the joke. The other fun thing is that the jokes can be a lot of fun as conversation starters. Why do we refer to "ears of corn?" How much is a buck? And so on.

Yes, I'm slightly crazy . . . .

-- KarenA - 27 Jul 2006

I think I may be having one of those moments Catherine talks about . . .

After writing about the "joke of the day," I visited the "Creating Passionate Users" website and read her entry about the power of fun. I think what I was trying to say that jokes/humor can be a tool for vocabulary development. The idea is to show kids how much fun language can be and get them hooked on it.

-- KarenA - 27 Jul 2006

great minds think alike!

I DO know Plantagenet (though I've forgotten which character he was); don't know plangent.

Never see "plangent," either.

-- CatherineJohnson - 27 Jul 2006

or example, on "National Talk Like a Pirate Day" our joke was: "How much does a pirate charge for corn?" Answer: A buccaneer (a buck an ear). Or, "What does a pirate say when his wooden leg gets cold?" Shiver my timbers.

That's a great idea!

Where did you get the jokes??

-- CatherineJohnson - 27 Jul 2006

I think I may be having one of those moments Catherine talks about . . .

After writing about the "joke of the day," I visited the "Creating Passionate Users" website and read her entry about the power of fun.

It's helpful, isn't it!

Being in synch with the universe, I mean.

Or whatever it is....

-- CatherineJohnson - 27 Jul 2006

"Where did you get the jokes??"

We write most of them ourselves. It's great fun, actually, and highly addictive. We started the joke writing process when Megan's third grade class was involved with Chick it Out--a chick hatching program sponsored by the county extension office.

On the same day that the eggs hatched in Meg's class, the kids had eaten chicken breast patties for lunch. So, while their bellies were filled with chicken, the third graders were oohing and ahhing over their newly-hatched baby chicks. I found that hilarious and at dinner that night we started our own "name the chick" contest. Some of the names were Colonel Sanders, Friar Tuck, Cluck Finn and so on. From there, we started in with the jokes (we have over 100 chick jokes, I think). Several of my favorites: Why didn't the chick want to join the Army? He was afraid of Colonel Sanders. How do chicks practice fire safety? Stop, drop and egg roll. Why was the chick happy to get his report card? Because he received a Large Grade A.

We eventually started applying it to whatever subject was at hand. One of the things we do with the writing club kids is provide them with joke starters. We are actually trying to teach them the process by providing them with models and vocabulary words to use, usually centered around a theme. Some of the kids get quite good at it.

-- KarenA - 27 Jul 2006

"I DO know Plantagenet (though I've forgotten which character he was); don't know plangent."

I suspect you are thinking of Richard of York, who is referred to as "Plantagenet" in Shakespeare's Henry VI, but the name is that of the ruling dynasty that ended in England with the accession of Henry Tudor (Henry VII) to the throne. Henry VII's accession ended the Wars of the Roses and began the Tudor dynasty.

-- DougSundseth - 27 Jul 2006

My sixth grade spelling teacher was awesome. We all had individualized lists chosen from whatever book we were reading at the time for our latest book report, free reading, book-it, etc. Each week, we picked out 15 words which our teacher would approve or deny based on whether she though they were challenging enough. We wrote them in our spelling notebooks and defined them with the dictionary. Then, we did a series of exercises such as writing defining sentances, creating crossword puzzles, etc. We traded crossword puzzles with two others so that we got exposure to each others' words (we were grouped by similar ability).

At the end of the week, we were partnered up and gave each other our individual spelling tests. It worked beautifully! I remember I was reading the Anne of Green Gables series at the time and learned quite a few words that I probably would have just skipped over had I not been forced to define/spell them!

Before 6th grade, spelling was a waste for me. The words were too easy, as I was reading about 5 years aboved grade level and had encountered them multiple times.

-- AndyJoy - 03 Aug 2006

no....I'm thinking of the character in the Trollope books

heck

which series was it??

not Barcetshire; the other series

Apparently I've mislaid my nouns

This reminds me: didn't I order a Trollope novel recently?

-- CatherineJohnson - 02 Sep 2006

This must be synchronicity night! I was just a few minutes ago reading an article in last week's New Yorker and there were two words in one paragraph that I didn't know:

flaneurs (there's a hat over the a) omphalos

I remember a neat exercise one of my kids had in probably 6th grade (~1980) where everyone in the class had to write a story that incorporated a given list of about a dozen words. We had fun trying to put all the words in one sentence. I can't remember now any more details.

-- SusanJ - 03 Sep 2006

whoa!

I've seen "flaneurs" before, but don't remember the definition.

I don't think I've seen "omphalos."

-- CatherineJohnson - 05 Sep 2006

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Title:	Robust Vocabulary Instruction
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