Learning Words Inside & Out Make It Transparent: Showing Students Your Thinking About Words

1. Learning Words Inside & OutMake It Transparent: Showing Students Your Thinking About Words Frey, N., & Fisher, D. (2009). Learning Words Inside & Out: Vocabulary Instruction That Boosts Achievement in All Subject Areas. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

2. Today’s Purpose Today we will look more closely at the ways we can model our vocabulary thinking. How do students acquire and extend their academic vocabulary across the school day?

3. The Power of Modeling Why? Humans mimic or imitate Mirror neuron systems Students need examples of the type of thinking required Facilitates the use of academic language

4. Teacher Modeling • Brief (5–10 minutes) think-alouds • Identify unfamiliar words to learn procedures for discerning meaning • Show students how to look inside (morphology and structure) and outside (context clues and resources) words

5. TEACHER RESPONSIBILITY “I do it” Focus Lesson Guided Instruction “We do it” “You do it together” Collaborative “You do it alone” Independent STUDENT RESPONSIBILITY A Model for Success for All Students Fisher, D., & Frey, N. (2008). Better Learning Through Structured Teaching: A Framework for the Gradual Release of Responsibility. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

6. Ways to Model for Vocabulary Development • Model word-solving techniques • How do you use word parts to solve unfamiliar words? • How do use contextual clues to solve unfamiliar words? • How do you use resources to solve for unfamiliar words?

7. Looking Inside Words: Morphology and Word Parts • Affixes (prefixes and suffixes) • Root words • Derivations • Cognates for English learners • Beware of false cognates! (embarrassed/embarazada)

8. You Try It!

9. Context Clues • Definition/Explanation • Access to clean water would ameliorate, and improve upon, living conditions within the village. • Restatement/Synonym • Access to clean water would ameliorate living conditions within the village such that life would be tolerable for the people who live there. • Contrast/Antonym • Access to clean water would ameliorate living conditions within the village, whereas continued reliance on a polluted river will exacerbate a bad situation. • Inference/General Context • Access to clean water would ameliorate living conditions within the village. Clean water would make life tolerable as residents could focus on other pressing needs such as finding food and shelter. • Punctuation • Access to clean water would ameliorate—maketolerable—living conditions within the village.

10. But Context Isn’t Always Enough… The documentary film March of the Penguins was a surprise hit in 2005. However, the movie neglected to point out that the population of emperor penguins is thinning. Since the 1970s, the penguins’ neighborhood has become increasingly warm. The Southern Ocean experiences natural shifts in weather from one decade to the next, but this warm spell has continued, causing the thinning of sea ice. Less sea ice means fewer krill, the penguins’ main food source. Also, the weakened ice is more likely to break apart and drift out to sea, carrying off the young penguin chicks, who often drown. Is global warming responsible for the thinning of penguin population? Scientists believe so. (Gore, 2007, p. 94) Think aloud to clear up confusions about skinny penguins!

11. Solving Words Using Resources • Peer resources from productive group work • Dictionaries • Bookmark Internet resources • Model how you use these (Phone a Friend, dictionary use on doc camera)

12. Examining Think-aloud Scripts Three scenarios: • 6th grade math example (p. 42) • 3rd grade social studies example (p. 45) • Kindergarten reading example (p. 46) What vocabulary and comprehension modeling techniques did the teacher use? How would you model this?

13. Next Steps • What are we currently doing that works well? • What are the areas in need of improvement? • How should we collaborate with one another within and across grade levels?