Craig Woollard Visiting Senior Fellow

 

'We use words to think; the more words we know, the finer our understanding is about the world.' (Vocabulary Development, Steven A. Stahl).

How do we as teachers engage students in learning new vocabulary? How can we ensure that the new vocabulary to which students are introduced is retained? Which vocabulary should we introduce and how should we teach it?

My own teaching of vocabulary changed radically after I had trained as a teacher of English as a Foreign Language. Having been an elementary classroom teacher for ten years, I went back to school and learned new and exciting techniques about teaching that have remained integral to my practice ever since. In order to support foreign language learners to access texts, as student teachers we were strongly encouraged to anticipate which vocabulary was likely to present challenges to our students. This practice meant that we had to know the text well and to plan specific vocabulary work in each lesson. This is how it was approached:

1. We would establish the text's context, often with photographs or images, and use these to ask students to predict any vocabulary they might expect to encounter in the subsequent listening or reading.
2. Then, we would scribe their suggestions as well as the vocabulary we had anticipated would prove difficult before the students engaged in reading or listening.
3. Students were asked if they knew any of the word meanings and, if they did, we would write their own definition/s next to the words or draw pictures where possible.
4. Moreover, we were taught to use gestures or body movements that might correspond appropriately to the word, help make it meaningful to the students, and help them retain it.
5. Lastly, we would use a chorus and drill technique to ensure correct pronunciation of new words. This entailed modeling saying the word aloud, enunciating it clearly, emphasizing where the stress on the word fell, and chorusing with the whole class before drilling the word with individual students.

In Bringing Words to Life, Beck et. al. argue that 'introducing word meanings that are important to comprehension before reading is the reasonable choice. This makes sense in contrast to waiting until after reading to introduce the words.' But Beck believes that if the word is likely to affect comprehension of the story, then the most effective place to introduce word meaning may be at the moment when the word is met in the text. 'The meaning can then be integrated into the context of use immediately, which provides strong support for comprehension.' This happens almost as a matter of course in most classrooms, simply because there are words which students find challenging or unknown that perhaps we hadn't anticipated would be problematic.

Steven A. Stahl, however, proposes an alternative point of view. His examples about the significance of context are compelling because he argues that some contexts are so explicit that potentially difficult vocabulary can be inferred readily, while other contexts provide very few or no clues as to the word's meaning.

Therefore, it would seem teachers need to know texts well, and to judge from the context itself as to whether it is more efficacious to pre-teach the vocabulary or to teach it at the moment that the vocabulary is met. It all depends on the context. Stahl explains students' understanding of a word's meaning and how it can vary greatly depends significantly on the context in which the word is encountered and he calls this 'contextual knowledge'.

Like Beck, Robert J. Marzano argues for 'systematic instruction' of vocabulary in order to address the achievement gap that invariably widens between students who come from academically advantaged backgrounds compared to those who do not. In his book, Building Academic Vocabulary, Marzano suggests a six-step process for the teaching of new vocabulary. This includes the interesting and useful idea of asking students to 'construct a picture, symbol or graphic' to represent the term as well as encouraging students to play games to reinforce the new vocabulary. Alongside descriptions of the games, Marzano's text also provides examples of graphic organizers to support students in acquiring new vocabulary. Moreover, in deciding which vocabulary to teach, he provides and extremely helpful list of 7,923 terms taken from national standards and a range of curriculum areas.

Playing vocabulary games is the approach that many teachers use in the UK, alongside investigations in which students are encouraged to hypothesize and formulate spelling patterns and 'rules'. Research has shown that in terms of learning new words in the course of reading, learning does occur, but only in small increments. Studies estimate that of 100 unfamiliar words met in reading, only between 5 to15 will actually be learned (see Beck et. al., Bringing Words to Life). Therefore, opportunities such as games to practice newly learned vocabulary in a lively, engaging way, seem essential if we are to support students in retaining more words than the paltry average number cited.

In the UK, I always begin my literacy block with a short, snappy word level game. In some respects, this is because I believe there is logic to teaching a literacy block that proceeds from word to sentence to text. Another reason is that beginning a literacy lesson with a game motivates students and makes literacy learning fun; there is nothing more dispiriting than teachers announcing to students that they are going to study literacy to be met with a universal chorus of groans.

A favorite vocabulary game among students is tic-tac-toe or, as we Brits call it, noughts and crosses. In this activity, students play in pairs on one whiteboard slate and complete a tic-tac-toe grid with words rather than circles and crosses. The aim is for one student to outwit his or her partner by getting three words in a line either vertically, diagonally or horizontally. For the teacher, this activity is easy to differentiate. For example, with younger or less able students, Student A can use only words beginning with the letter 's', while Student B can use words only beginning with the letter 'b'. With more able students, for example, the teacher can ask Student A to use words beginning with the consonant digraph 'st', whilst Student B can use words beginning with the consonant digraph 'br'. The game's possibilities are endless. In this game, I often ask students to practice their grammar. For example, when teaching the How To genre, I ask students to play tic-tac-toe using only verb imperatives, e.g. put, turn, bake, stop, etc, that characteristically begin instructions. During a narrative unit of work, I ask students to use synonyms for said or nice, powerful verbs or adverbs or to write connectives (transition words) - all designed to focus students' attention on the ingredients that make good stories. The game is also useful when teaching a new science, mathematics, history or social studies topic, etc, to reinforce newly learned concepts and words (see Marzano's extensive list in Appendix B of his book, Building Academic Vocabulary).

Another game my students love is called Word Snakes. Again, this game is easy to differentiate and the basic example explained below is taken from Heinemann's First Steps. Students work in pairs and take turns to write a word that must begin with the final letter of their partner's word. For example, Partner A writes the word place, which ends in the letter 'e'. Partner B thinks of a word that begins with 'e' and writes elephant. Student A then thinks of a word that begins with 't', and so on. To differentiate this game to make it more challenging, ask Student A to write a word that ends in two letters from which Student B must be able to begin a new word, e.g., forest. Student B then writes a word beginning with the letters 'st'. The students continue until one writes a word that ends in a letter combination from which it is impossible to make a new word, e.g., ceiling. No words in English begin with the letters 'ng'. The student who wrote the word ceiling would lose the game. Alternatively, one partner can win if his or her peer cannot think of a word that begins with the two letters used. A dictionary needs to be available to students for this game, both to check spellings and to confirm that there is not a word beginning in certain letter combinations.

Most teachers in the UK use resources published by the Primary National Strategy. Pre-K, Kindergarten and First Grade teachers use a manual called Progression in Phonics and its supplement, Playing with Sounds, both of which explain a clear scope and sequence for introducing letter sounds, and are available online at the address given at the end of this article. Neither of these publications contains a ditto sheet. Instead, they describe an array of quick, fun and interactive games for teachers to play with students to help them acquire a secure grasp of phonemes. Second through Fifth Grade teachers use a resource called the 'Spelling Bank'. Again, this publication is available online and contains no ditto sheets but provides word lists to promote investigations and games for teachers and students to play. We know from research that merely providing students with word lists to memorize in preparation for a spelling test does not result in lasting knowledge. Students usually commit the spelling of these words to their short-term memory, cramming for the purpose of the test, only to forget them soon after the test itself is over.

Where possible, I ask students to work with a regular talk partner during spelling activities to encourage them to support each other in their learning. A typical game would be for students in fourth grade to try to determine when we use soft 'c' and when we use hard 'c' in our writing. Having ensured the students know and can pronounce the difference between a soft 'c' and a hard 'c' correctly, the teacher asks the students, working in pairs, to draw a t-chart on their whiteboards. On the left hand side, students write soft 'c' and on the right hand side, they write hard 'c'. The students are then shown individually a series of words containing the letter 'c' followed by a vowel, e.g. corridor, candle, recite, recur, etc. The students whisper and decide if the word should be written below the soft 'c' or hard 'c' heading. Once the teacher has shown all the words, usually around 15 in total, the students are asked to investigate when we should use soft 'c' and when we should use hard 'c' and, more importantly, to see if they can formulate a rule to support them in future reading and writing. It is important to give students adequate thinking time to test their hypotheses and not to feel tempted simply to give them the answer. In subsequent days, students can be introduced to more words containing the letter 'c' and the teacher can include words that begin with the letters 'cy' to explore the rule further. I then ask students to write the rule in a sentence or two that would help to explain it to someone else.

A similar game is to focus students' learning on the suffixes ible and able. As before, students work in pairs on whiteboards and draw a t-chart and write ible in the top left-hand corner and able in the top right-hand corner. The teacher shows, one at a time, a series of words on cards that omit the suffix, e.g. terr___, ed___, favor___, break___, incred___, etc. Students write the whole word, including the suffix, beneath the ible or able heading to see if the word looks right. When the teacher has finished showing all the words, students are given time to see if they can determine when they should use the suffix ible or able. This is more difficult than it seems and quite often students begin by focusing on double consonants and vowels, etc. Although this does not lead them to the correct answer, I encourage this talk about language and the fact that they are pooling their knowledge about patterns and rules they have learned previously. I shall leave you to discover the answer for yourselves. However, as so often seems to occur in English, there are some exceptions to the rule! The most helpful way that I have found in which to display and explain the ible and able suffix for students is via a Venn diagram, placing the exceptions in the middle. As more words containing these suffixes are encountered, students can add to the Venn diagram accordingly, testing the rules and exceptions again.

The teaching of vocabulary needs to be rigorous, well-planned but also investigative, interactive and fun, and clearly that does not mean asking students to look up words in a dictionary and then write them in complete sentences! What better way to demoralize students! Worse, in Miller and Gildea's research of 1985, sixty-three percent of students' sentences in response to dictionary exercise questions were judged to be "odd". Beck provides multiple reasons for this and advocates avoiding teaching vocabulary work through conventional dictionary definitions: 'combined with the fact that definitions are not particularly helpful for student learning, we prefer to introduce new vocabulary by explaining a word's meaning rather than providing a definition for the word.'

Becky McKay introduced the Literacy Fellows to the excellent Collins Cobuild English Language Dictionary, which puts words into clear contexts (back to that word context) that are likely to support students' understanding. Moreover, the dictionary uses Frequency Bands to rate every word on a 5-0 scale, which shows how often a word is used or encountered in everyday English. The dictionary also contains helpful notes to emphasize incorrect or unusual usage and gives examples for proper 'English sounding' usages. This dictionary is a must-have for every classroom. As Stahl states, 'teaching word meanings should be a way for students to define their world, to move from light or dark to a more fine-grained description of the colors that surround us.'

---

References:

Beck, Isabel L.& McKeown, Margaret G.& Kucan, Linda. Bringing Words to Life - Robust Vocabulary Instruction, The Guildford Press (2002)

First Steps Spelling Developmental Continuum, published by Heinemann. ISBN 0731223616

Marzano, Robert J. & Pickering, Debra J. Building Academic Vocabulary, ASDC (2005)

National Primary Strategy publications: Progression in Phonics, Playing with Sounds, Spelling Bank. Available online: http://www.standards.dfes.gov.uk/literacy.

Stahl, Steven A. Vocabulary Development, from Reading Research to Practice, Brookline Books (1999)

The Collins Cobuild Dictionary (paperback edition), published by Collins. ISBN 007210124