PLC: Best Practices for Vocabulary Instruction

1. PLC: Best Practices forVocabulary Instruction Cedartown Middle School: 2014-2015 Get out your iPads and visit the following link to describe the vocabulary strategy you brought today: www.todaysmeet.com/PLCatCMS

2. PLC Lesson Plan for 9/17/14 Cedartown Middle School: 2014-2015 • Effective Vocabulary Instruction • What works (and what doesn’t) with vocabulary • Marzano’s approach to vocabulary • Instruction of new strategies available for implementation • Sharing of effective strategies • Vocabulary assignment for September

3. PLC: Best Practices forVocabulary Instruction Cedartown Middle School: 2014-2015 WHAT NOT TO DO

4. Vocabulary Instruction is not… • Having students look up words in the dictionary so they can copy the definition down verbatim even though they still don’t know what it means. • Overwhelming students with 50 new words per week especially when they couldn’t possibly retain everything. • Telling students the definitions to words without giving them adequate practice using them. • Believing that because a student does well on a vocabulary test that knowledge transfers immediately and remains permanent. • Getting through a vocabulary unit so we can check it off our list.

5. Vocabulary Casserole Ingredients Needed: 20 words no one has ever heard before in his life 1 dictionary with very confusing definitions 1 matching test to be distributed by Friday 1 teacher who wants students to be quiet on Mondays copying words Put 20 words on the board. Have students copy then look up in dictionary. Make students write all the definitions. For a little spice, require that students write words in sentences. Leave alone all week. Top with a boring test on Friday. Perishable. This casserole will be forgotten by Saturday afternoon. Serves: No one. Adapted from When Kids Can’t Read, What Teachers Can Do by Kylene Beers

6. PLC: Best Practices forVocabulary Instruction Cedartown Middle School: 2014-2015 THE RESEARCH BEHIND MODERN DAY APPROACHES

7. EIGHT RESEARCH-BASED CHARACTERISTICS OF EFFECTIVE VOCABULARY INSTRUCTION • Effective vocabulary instruction does not rely on definitions. • Students must represent their knowledge of words in linguistic and nonlinguistic ways. • Effective vocabulary instruction involves the gradual shaping of word meanings through multiple exposures. • Teaching word parts enhances students’ understanding of terms. • Different types of words require different types of instruction. • Students should discuss the terms they are learning. • Students should play with words. • Instruction should focus on terms that have a high probability of enhancing academic success. • (Adapted from Building Academic Vocabulary by Robert Marzano and Debra Pickering, 2005)

8. 3 Tiers of Words • Tier 3 – Highly specialized, subject-specific; low occurrences in texts; lacking generalization • E.g., lava, aorta, legislature, circumference • Tier 2 –Abstract, general academic (across content areas); encountered in written language; high utility across instructional areas • E.g., vary, relative, innovation, accumulate, surface, layer • Tier 1 – Basic, concrete, encountered in conversation/ oral vocabulary; words most student will know at a particular grade level • E.g., clock, baby, color Common Core State Standards, Appendix A, page 33

9. Choosing words • Jose avoided playing the ukulele. • Which word would you choose to pre-teach? Which word?

10. Avoided Why? • Verbs are where the action is • Teach avoid, avoided, avoids • Likely to see it again in grade-level text • Likely to see it on assessments • We are going to start calling these useful words “Tier 2 words” • Why not ukulele? • Rarely seen in print • Rarely used in stories or conversation or content-area information

11. Implications for Instruction • Teach fewer words. • Focus on important Tier 2 (high utility, cross-domain words) to know & remember. • Simply provide Tier 3 (domain-specific, technical) words with a definition. • Increase independent reading time. • Facilitate read-alouds. • Keep vocabulary in circulation. • Keep vocabulary interactive. • Use graphic organizers.

12. VocabularyTreat: Partner Task Ingredients Needed: Directions: Serves: Many

13. PLC: Best Practices forVocabulary Instruction Cedartown Middle School: 2014-2015 NEW & ENGAGING APPROACHES TO VOCABULARY INSTRUCTION

14. Idea #1: Morphology Teaching morphology (the study of roots) to students is beneficial because when you teach a root, you give the students the meaning to hundreds of words in the process.

16. Idea #2: Semantic Word Analysis Semantic word analyses can be used to teach students the nuances of words and really get them thinking about how one word differs from another. Semantic word analyses leads to a powerful discussion about the way we tend to view people that we don’t know. This works well for topics that have complicated issues and themes.

17. Idea #2: Semantic Word Analysis

18. Idea #3: Pictures Use pictures when teaching vocabulary so that students can have a visual that aids them in remembering what the word means. Have students draw three pictures/contexts where the word could be used and then include the meaning of the word on the back of the page. You can hang up their pictures on a classroom word wall so students can refer to them later.

20. Idea #4: Word Sorts Once you’ve taught students a word, you can use word sorts to help review the words to ensure students remember them and to deepen understanding. Divide the words you’re working with into two separate piles—let students choose what two categories in which to put the words. After talking about the sorts as a class, have students re-sort the same words into two different categories without using any categories that we talked about as a class. This forces my students to think about the words in a different way each time.

21. Idea #4: Word Sorts Chided Surreptitiously Mortified Chagrined Lucrative Insatiable Gouged Prodigious Defunct Insidious Tipple Students sorted these words into categories like helpful/non helpful, descriptive/non-descriptive, scary/ not scary, good/bad, loud/ not loud describes ninjas/ doesn’t describe ninjas.

22. Idea #5: Review Activity Solving Analogy Problems • One or two terms are missing. Please think about statements below, turn to your elbow partner and provide terms that will complete following analogies. Inchis toruleraswordis to ______. Decibel is to sound as _____ is to _____.

23. Vocabulary Websites • http://www.wordsift.com/ Word maps, word clouds • http://quizlet.com/ Make flash cards & games • http://jc-schools.net/tutorials/vocab/ Academic vocabulary games • http://www.vocabulary.com/ More games, including games using Latin & Greek roots • www.worldwidewords.comDefinitions, history and short essays on words • http://www.visualthesaurus.com/ Visual thesaurus • www.vocabgrabber.com • www.wordle.com

24. PLC: Best Practices forVocabulary Instruction Cedartown Middle School: 2014-2015 SHARING OF TEACHER ACTIVITIES

25. September PLC Focus • Implement a new vocabulary strategy in your class that was shared today. Check back for more shared strategies! • Document your performance and upload to your TLE platform by 9/30 using the following steps: • Log in to TLE • Select the container Teacher Assessment on Performance Standards • Select Documentation of Performance • Add • Type in response • Select standards • Select DONE • Attach assignment, picture(s), and/or video • Upload a photo to your Online Classroom

26. PLC: Best Practices forVocabulary Instruction Cedartown Middle School: 2014-2015 NEXT WEEK PLC: USING TECHNOLOGY TO ENHANCE VOCABULARY INSTRUCTION (featuring Wes Astin!)