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Building Background Knowledge for Academic Achievement

Building Background Knowledge for Academic Achievement. Jane Dezinski Director of Intervention and Prevention NC RESA. Entry slip: On a notecard, take a few minutes to write: In your mind, why is vocabulary instruction important?

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Building Background Knowledge for Academic Achievement

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  1. Building Background Knowledge for Academic Achievement Jane Dezinski Director of Intervention and Prevention NC RESA

  2. Entry slip: • On a notecard, take a few minutes to write: • In your mind, why is vocabulary instruction important? • What type of vocabulary instruction do you currently do with your students? • What subjects? • Share your responses with someone on the other side of the room

  3. The Importance of Background Knowledge • What students already know about the content is one of the strongest indicators of how well they will learn new information relative to the content. • Academic background knowledge affects more than just “school learning.” • Studies have also shown its relation to occupation and status in life.

  4. The Consequences of Poverty • Findings in Figure 1.4 characterize the relationship between poverty and academic success after controlling for ethnicity, family structure, and mother’s education.

  5. Why vocabulary instruction? • Research indicates that vocabulary knowledge is highly correlated with family income. • Estimated 4,700 word difference between high and low socioeconomic students (SES). • Mid-SES 1st graders know 50% more words than Low-SES. • High-SES 1st graders know twice the words of Low-SES. • Hart and Risley’s research indicates: • By the time children in welfare homes are 1 year old, they have only about 50% of the language experience of children from working-class families and only 30% of the language experience of children from professional families.

  6. Impact of Direct Vocabulary Instruction Research shows a student in the 50th percentile in terms of ability to comprehend the subject matter taught in school, with no direct vocabulary instruction scores around the 50th percentile. The same student, after specific content-area terms have been taught in a specific way, raises his/her comprehension ability to the 83rd percentile. Stahl and Fairbanks, 1986

  7. Acquisition of Academic BackgroundKnowledge: Interaction of 2 Factors Fluid Intelligence: Our Innate Ability to Process and Store Information Number and Frequency of Academically Oriented Experiences

  8. You Can Make a difference! Although a certain level of innate intelligence is important to academic success, learned intelligence is the stronger correlate of success in school. (Marzano, 2004, p. 13) • Two ways we can enhance academic background knowledge. • Direct Approaches • Indirect Approaches

  9. Make your case for Vocabulary Instruction Read slides 5 through 10 and discuss with your neighbor. Build your case for: Why is vocabulary instruction important? For more details, read Chapter 1 in Building Background Knowledge for Academic Achievement

  10. Direct approaches • What does it mean? • Directly providing a variety of academically enriching experiences, particularly for students whose home environments do not do so naturally, outside of regular school day activities. • Examples of direct experiences: • Field trips to museums, art galleries, etc. • School-sponsored travel and exchange programs • Mentoring programs with members of the community • Service learning

  11. Indirect approaches • What does it mean? • Experiences that can be fostered on-site without the time and resource commitment needed for direct approaches. • Example: • Reading, talking/listening to others, or watching educational television to gain experiences related to Africa without physically traveling to Africa. • Vocabulary Instruction • Reading informational text/Literature Circles

  12. How do you determine appropriate vocabulary? • Discuss at content or grade level meetings to determine vocabulary terms related to the standards and content being taught • Use pre-made vocabulary lists • Building Academic Vocabulary: Teacher’s Manual (Marzano & Pickering) • Building Background Knowledge for Academic Achievement (Marzano) • Teaching Basic and Advanced Vocabulary (Marzano) • For the Love of Words: Vocabulary Instruction That Works: Grades K-6 (Paynter, Bodrova, et al) • McREL’s Compendium • http://www.mcrel.org/standards-benchmarks/

  13. The continuous learning process:For information to be anchored in permanent memory, it must have linguistic (language based) and nonlinguistic (imagery based) representations.

  14. Six Steps to Effective Vocabulary Instruction

  15. Step 1: The Teacher Provides a student friendly Description, Explanation, or Example of the New Term • Provide learners information about the term. • Determine what the learner already knows about the term. • Ask learners to share what they already know as a means of monitoring misconceptions. • Ask learners to share what they already know to use this knowledge as a foundation for more learning. • Utilize examples, descriptions, but not definitions. Definitions are not a recommended method for vocabulary instruction as they do not provide learners an informal, natural way to learn new vocabulary.

  16. Examples: page 15 - 17 • Read paragraph 2 – 4 on page 16 • Using the information presented here, how would you describe the term habitat to your students? • Share with your neighbor.

  17. Step 2: Students Restate the Explanation of the New Term in Their Own Words • Students construct their own explanations based on what the teacher has presented and write them in their academic notebooks, which are divided into subject areas. • Remind learners to not copy, but use their own words. • Monitor students to determine if any confusion exists. • Provide more descriptions, explanations, or examples if necessary. • Request that students record these in their Academic Notebook Worksheet. These notebooks can travel with the learner as he/she moves through each grade level and become a compilation of vocabulary terms mastered.

  18. Wiki spacesCreate a class wiki space as a vocabulary journal http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/leading_from_the_classroom/2010/11/are_your_students_using_wikis_to_strengthen_vocabulary_skills.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+LeadingFromTheClassroom+(Leading+From+the+Classroom)

  19. Step 3: Students Create Nonlinguistic Representation of the term: picture, symbol, or graphic representation • Share examples of other learners’ drawings or allow students to work in teams to help those who complain they cannot draw. • Teach the concept of speed drawing for those who labor too long over their work. • Ask a learner to share their work. • Use graphics from magazines or the internet. • Internet clipart resources: • Madrid teacher • Vocabulary quiz using images • Illustrating terms through symbols, drawing the actual term, illustrating with a cartoon, or drawing an example of the term should be encouraged.

  20. Examples of nonlinguistic representations: • Graphic organizers (Kidspiration) • Drawings • Photographs • Pictographs Students can also be encouraged to create mental pictures and act out meanings of new words.

  21. Step 4: Students Periodically engage in structured vocabulary discussions That help Them Add to Their Knowledge of Vocabulary Terms • Add to the vocabulary worksheet as appropriate under new information. • Encourage learners to identify prefixes, suffixes, antonyms, synonyms, related words for the vocabulary term as “New Info” on the Academic Notebook Worksheet. • If English is a second language to the learner, provide an opportunity to translate the word into their native language (BabelFish) • A list of activities can be found at: Teachnet, Gameaquarium, ESL Bears, Word Scrambler.

  22. Possible Activities • Comparing terms • Classifying terms • Generating Metaphors using terms • Generating Analogies using terms • Revising initial descriptions or nonlinguistic representations of terms • Using understandings of roots and affixes to deepen knowledge of terms

  23. Frayer Model Frayer’s model provides another interaction with the terms to clear up any misunderstandings http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&expIds=17259,18167,26637,26699,27342,27404&sugexp=ldymls&xhr=t&q=frayer+model&cp=4&wrapid=tljp128925918570908&um=1&ie=UTF-8&source=univ&ei=s4jYTMfNCoG8lQfnuoj9CA&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&ct=title&resnum=2&sqi=2&ved=0CC8QsAQwAQ&biw=1168&bih=668&tbm=isch

  24. Browse through page 38 – 52 for ideas for review activitiesPlay Free association at your tableTarget Terms are On Index cards at Table

  25. Step 5: Periodically the students are asked to discuss the terms with one another. • Pair-Share Strategy: • Think: allow think time for learners to review their own descriptions and images of the terms. • Pair: put learners in pairs to discuss their descriptions, images, and any new info related to the terms. • Share: provide opportunity for groups to share aloud and discuss conceptions and misconceptions. • Monitor as learners help each other identify and clear up confusion about new terms.

  26. Think-Pair-Share • Compare their descriptions of the term • Describe their pictures to one another • Explain to each other any new information they have learned (“aha’s”) • Identify areas of disagreement or confusion and seek clarification • Students can make revisions to their own work

  27. Ideas for student discussion: • Organize students into small groups asking them to discuss terms in the vocabulary section of the academic notebook. • Prompts for discussion could include: • terms interesting to students • questions about specific terms • identify terms with multiple meanings • favorite terms • terms that were difficult to learn and why

  28. Step 6: Periodically Students Are Involved in Games That Allow Them to Play with the Terms • Charades • Pictionary • Gestures • Taboo • Hangman • Great web site for classroom games http://www.teachersdesk.org/spell_plans.html

  29. Pyramid • I Have, Who Has? • Memory • Name that Category ($100,000 Pyramid) • Bingo (you give definition, kid marks the word) • Create a skit (assign groups of 3 – 4 kids to make a skit out of 3 vocab words) • Kids make their own game / Gamigami

  30. Games: Browse pages 53 - 66 • Play “Talk a Mile a Minute” with your team

  31. Overview of the process and with examples and ideas for games: • http://jc-schools.net/tutorials/vocab/strategies.html#Step_1 • http://quizlet.com/

  32. Reflect on the Vocabulary development process… Exit Slip • How is it different from traditional vocabulary instruction? • Which steps in the process are value added components? • What parts of this are you already doing in your school day? • What would you have to do to fully implement this process? • How will you get started?

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