Vocabulary Strategies

Vocabulary Strategies To Build Literacy and Proficiency

Welcome • Your presenter • Session objectives: participants will • implement strategies that prepare students to read • use diverse means to guide students while reading • provide students with varied opportunities to work specifically with vocabulary from readings • employ numerous post-reading strategies that encourage evaluation, analysis and personal responses to readings

Agenda • Use of English readings in this session • Strategies presented not limited to the style of writing in which they were used here! • Activities intended to be done in target languages • Doing the activities vs. talking about the activities • Reading for introductory levels: song • Informational content reading: history text reading • Literature selection: poem

Research • Extensive research on language acquisition for ELs • print-rich environment • frequent, but appropriate, exposure to authentic materials • explicit vocabulary instruction • pre-, during-, and post-reading strategies • personal connections to material • Similar findings in second-language acquisition • Partial bibliography included online

Vocabulary sort for beginning levels • In your groups, choose 10 words that you understand from the list. • Put these words in an order that makes sense to you…except alphabetical! • Prepare to describe your word selections and organization to the class

Questions and Predictions • What questions do you have about what you are about to hear based on these words? • What predictions do you have, based on these words? • Time for music!

Listen for days, times, and rooms • Complete activity one on your sheet as you listen

Complete the lyrics • Listen again and fill in the missing words on your copy of the song.

Other ways to say it… • Use the completed song lyrics to find all of the ways the people listed are mentioned in the song. • List your findings in Activity 3.

Let’s sort again! • Now that you’ve heard the song, look at the list of words again (activity 4 in your handout). • Pick 10 words that represent your understanding of the song. • Put those words in order to help you talk about the song. • Send an envoy to another group to share what you chose • Class debrief

Sorting for more advanced groups • Use all of the words both times the students sort • They can put words in order, in categories, in themes, in a diagram, or in any other system they choose both times they sort. • The second time they sort, the system for organization must reflect their group’s understanding of the text and they must send an envoy to explain their system and to learn about how another group completed the task.

Revisit our predictions • Which predictions were correct? Which ones weren’t?

Another activitywith this song • Create a diamond poem. • Choose your words, according to the directions • Put your words on the page so they make a diamond shape • Write a sentence summarizing the theme of the song and your poem. • See your copy of the directions

Debrief text 1 • In what ways were you prepared for the text before seeing or hearing it? • What strategies were used to help you focus while the song was playing? • What opportunities did you have to work specifically with the vocabulary of the song? • How did we engage multiple ways of learning? • In what ways did students have opportunities to make personal connections to the document?

Life in industrial cities • CompleteLiterary quadsas we read • Predict (initially from titles, headings, pictures) • List unknown vocab while reading assigned segment • Write a one-sentence summary of segment • Write questions about what you’ve read or about what might happen next • Revisit predictions (eliminate, confirm, create new ones) • Repeat steps 1-5 for each of the next segments, while adding step 6: try to answer any questions created

Colored cards: Respond by holding up the red card if the statement applies to the rich mill and factory owners and the blue card if it applies to the working poor during the Industrial Revolution • They lived in back-to-back houses. • They had no gardens and nowhere to keep hens. • They had furniture made by great designers. • Their water supply was inconsistent. • They did not use high quality building materials. • By the end of the Industrial Revolution, they had gas lighting in their homes. • They bought food from shops and markets. • The children suffered from tuberculosis and rickets.

Then and now: If you think the statement only applies to the poor during the Industrial Revolution, hold up the red card. If it also applies to the poor in our society today, hold up the blue card. • “The water supply was shared by all families on the street.” • “Every available space was occupied, from cellars to attics.” • “Lighting was by candle or oil lamp.” • “Wages were so low that, to get enough money for the family to survive, the mother had to go out to work too.” • “The poor relied almost entirely on bought food, which was usually of poor quality.”

Other ways to “read” the whole class • Numbered fingers • Individual white boards • Interactive white boards with individual student response units And, for opinions rather than facts • Line-ups • Four corners

Make a word wall • Write just one key word from the reading on your post-it. • Complete the word diagram about this word • Add your post-it to the word wall. • Discussion • Collect all word diagrams (Photocopy for class) • Definition review where necessary • How each word relates to the reading • Use words in new sentences

Vocacrostics • Using only vocabulary from the reading, create an acrostic that allows you to demonstrate your comprehension. • Sample

Found poem • Choose a word or sentence from reading that is the most powerful to you. • In your groups, have each person read what they have selected. • Organize the selected phrases in whatever order you choose. • Feel free to choose to repeat some of them. • Practice your new poem as a group. • Present your found poem orally to the class

Debrief reading 2 • How were you prepared for the content of the reading before seeing the text? • What system was used to help you focus while reading the text? • What opportunities did you have to work specifically with the vocabulary of the reading? • How did we engage multiple ways of learning? • In what ways did students have opportunities to make personal connections to the document?

At my house • Discuss the typical breakfast at your house. • What time is it? • What is each member of your family doing? • What do they say? • What else do you hear in the house? • What do they eat or drink? • When do they arrive at the table? • Use a web diagram like this to organize your responses.

Web diagram: Breakfast at home

Musical milling • While the music is playing, walk around the room, but do not talk. • When the music stops, stop walking, find a partner near you. • Read the phrase on your slip of paper to your partner. • Your partner will read his/her phrase to you. • You may repeat the phrases, but do not discuss them.

How’s your memory? Think-pair-share • Jot down everything you remember hearing as you listened to other people’s phrases. • Feel free to write down individual words if you don’t remember whole phrases. • Share your list with a partner. Feel free to add to your list. • What are your predictions for what we are about to read?

Stand and deliver • If you have a phrase that you believe deals with one of the following topics, please stand and read it to the group, even if someone already read it! • Making coffee • Smoking a cigarette • Getting ready to leave the house • The weather • Other phrases not yet mentioned

Read the poemBreakfast, by Jacques Prévert He poured the coffee Into the cup He poured the milk Into the cup of coffee He added the sugar To the coffee and milk He stirred it With a teaspoon He drank the coffee And put back the cup Without speaking to me He lit a cigarette He blew some rings With the smoke He flicked the ashes into the ashtray Without speaking to me Without looking at me He got up He put his hat On his head He put on his raincoat Because it was raining He went out Into the rain Without a word Without looking at me And I I took my head in my hands And I wept.

Act it out • In pairs, listen again to the poem. • This time, do everything I say.

What do you think? Table Discussion • Who are the two people in the poem? How are they related to each other? • What clues exist in the poem to indicate that this poem takes place during breakfast as opposed to another time of day? • Is this an unusual day for these two people, or is this typical? How do you know? • What is the purpose of repeating the word “without”? • Why did Prévert choose a mundane moment of the day to tell this story rather than a more vivid, but isolated, incident (such as an argument)?

Speed talking • You will use the vocabulary from the poem to tell us about the poem…in 20 seconds! • When it’s your turn, take any card from the set and use it in a sentence related to the poem. • If you have more time, take another card and make another sentence. • You may take more than one card at once, as long as you use them all in a sentence that is related to the poem before time is up. • When time is up, it’s your partner’s turn.

A challenge • Can you change the poem’s tone by changing and/or eliminating a maximum of six words? If the word is repeated, you can change it every time it occurs. • What words would you replace or eliminate? • What would you replace them with (if anything)? • Write your new poem using a font that complements the new tone and adding illustrations that match the words.

Debrief of reading 3 • In what ways were you prepared for the content of the poem? • What opportunities did you have to work specifically with the vocabulary of the poem or other vocabulary? • How did we engage multiple ways of learning? • In what ways did students have opportunities to make personal connections to the document? • Follow-up activity: a new day.

Session debrief • Key factors in working with vocabulary from readings • Questions? • Overview of web site resources: • http://vocabstrategies.wikispaces.com • Contacting me: advocacy@flagsteacher.com • Participant evaluation and feedback

Vocabulary Strategies