Strand: Listening Vocabulary (SID: 217)
From FreeReading
This strand aims to increase students' listening, or receptive, vocabulary, which is different from their expressive vocabulary -- words they can use in speaking or writing. A student's listening vocabulary is a determinant of his or her ability to comprehend what is read, since decoding a word but not knowing what it means will often block understanding. Studies show that it is possible to derive a word's meaning from the context of a passage in only a minority of cases. According to one study (Nagy, Herman, & Anderson, 1985), of 100 unfamiliar words met in reading, only 5 to 15 of them will be learned.
It's possible, though, to increase a student's vocabulary by up to 300 words per year with explicit vocabulary instruction, such as is included in this strand.
[Add note about how difficult it is to catch a student's vocab up later - Nagy]
To introduce vocabulary words, FreeReading uses a combination of:
- The method outlined in Bringing Words to Life by Isabel Beck, Margaret McKeown, and Linda Kucan (Guildford Press, 2002), and
- The Frayer Model as described in A Schema for Testing the Level of Cognitive Mastery by Frayer, D., Frederick, W. C., and Klausmeier, H. J. (Wisconsin Research and Development Center, 1969)
Selected words should be what Beck et al. call Tier Two words: those that are not so simple that most children will learn them without explicit instruction (such as like or bus); but not highly specific to a domain (such as isotope). Tier Two words are big words, such as reluctant, absurd, pinnacle, nuisance, commotion--Beck calls this "teaching big words to little kids."
For each word, the format is:
- Explain the context in which the word appears in the text.
- Define the word using a student-friendly definition (which is not necessarily the same as the dictionary definition).
- Ask students to say the word.
- Explain the key characteristics of the word by giving examples.
- Ask students to discriminate between examples and non-examples by saying the word only when they hear an example.
Here is an example for the word morsel, as used in Doctor DeSoto by William Steig:
- In the story, it says the fox thought Doctor DeSoto was a tasty morsel.
- A morsel means a tiny piece of food. What's the word?
- The fox thought of Doctor DeSoto as a morsel of food because, in comparison to a fox, a mouse is very small.
- I'm going to name some food; if the item I name is a very small piece of food, say "morsel." If it isn't a morsel, keep quiet. Ready?
- A peanut
- A whole pie
- A crumb of cake
- One Cheerio
Tips and tricks
- For words that lend themselves to an image, have students draw a picture of the new word. Optionally, have them copy the word next to the picture. This will help by (a) creating a mnemonic for the word, and (b) aiding with "deep processing" of the word and its meaning, which memory research shows (Baddeley, 1997) is linked to recall.
- Have students discuss the new word or words in pairs or small groups.
- [You can help FreeReading! Add vocabulary games here.]
References
- Baddeley, A. D. (1997). Human Memory: Theory and Practice. Hove, U.K. Psychology Press
- Nagy, W. E., Herman, I. A., & Anderson, R. C. (1985). Learning words from context. Reading Research Quarterly, 29(2), 233-253
Strand
As you can see from the table below, the recommendation here is to introduce new vocabulary every other day.
A Note on Lesson Deltas. If you're using an integrated instructional program such as IPID 101 that comes with a map, follow the lesson numbers in the map and ignore the deltas below. If you're using this sequence outside of a program map (e.g., you're creating your own program), take whatever lesson number you are at when you start this sequence, call that Lesson N, and add the deltas below to N to calculate the lesson number for each subsequent lesson -- i.e., if you are on Lesson 10 when you start this sequence, then the activities below labeled +14 should be included in your Lesson 24.