Introduction and Chapter 1: What's the Big Deal About Vocabulary Instruction?
Guiding Questions for Discussion (from the published Study Guide)
1. What research about vocabulary teaching and learning presented new ideas to you? How do these research-based concepts relate to your students?
2. Vocabulary knowledge has consistently been correlated with school achievement. How and why do you think vocabulary achievement relates to student success?
3. The concept of building "word schema" appears throughout the book. What is your understanding of word schema? Why is it important to learning?
Word Nerds: Introduction and Chapter 1
ReplyDeleteIntroduction and Chapter 1: What's the Big Deal About Vocabulary Instruction?
1. What research about vocabulary teaching and learning presented new ideas to you?
I found it interesting that Scott and Nagy (1989) found that students frequently interpreted one or two words from a dictionary as the entire meaning, and McKeown (1993) found that 60% of students’ responses using dictionary definitions were unacceptable. It was also stated that using student-friendly definitions is helpful in learning new vocabulary.
How do these research-based concepts relate to your students?
This stuck out to me because I felt having student look-up words, write the definition, write a sentence, and maybe draw a picture was an effective center activity.
2. Vocabulary knowledge has consistently been correlated with school achievement. How and why do you think vocabulary achievement relates to student success?
Vocabulary achievement goes hand-in-hand with comprehension. As students build word knowledge and word patterns student success is more probable because students can begin to independently learn new words.
3. The concept of building “word schema” appears throughout the book. What is your understanding of word schema? Why is it important to learning?
Word schema is when students learn by connecting through their background knowledge. It is important to learning because when students are able connect based on what they already know, vocabulary know grows more rapidly.
1. What research about vocabulary teaching and learning presented new ideas to you?
ReplyDeleteThe research about vocabulary teaching and learning that was new to me is that the International Reading Association has listed since 2011 that vocabulary/word meaning is "hot" topic among literacy experts. Systematic vocabulary instruction has been recommended as a way to address the achievement gap( Beck, McKeown,and Kucan 2002;Lovelace and Steward 2009; Marzano 2004; Stone and Urquhat 20008; White and Kim 2009), yet it still doesn't happen often in classroom. (p. 17)
How do these research-based concepts relate to your students?
The way that this research-based concepts relate to my students is that most teachers are not effectively teaching vocabulary and that is why most students are not performing the best on standardized tests. Teachers receive very little guidance on how to effectively teach vocabulary.
2. Vocabulary knowledge has consistently been correlated with school achievement. How and why do you think vocabulary achievement relates to student success?
Research has shown that students with have a solid word base get ahead faster and achieve more in school, while students with a less-developed vocabulary tend to progress more slowly. (Keith Stanovich, 1986) p.8 Also, our common core standards prominently focus on word knowledge. Vocabulary is is connected to the standards in Reading, Writing, and an entire cluster on Vocabulary Acquisition and Use( Language).
3. The concept of building "word schema" appears throughout the book. What is your understanding of word schema? Why is it important to learning?
My understanding of the word schema is when someone uses the background knowledge to have a better understanding of a word or concept.
1. The research that was new for me was the Meaningful Differences report that described the 30 million word gap of PRESCHOOLERS! from affluent families as compared to low-income families. That this gap correlated with later school achievement was pretty shocking because even though I "know" that early home life is an indicator of school readiness, I really believed more in the power of primary educators to combat this. It shows me how much work needs to go into school readiness, not just primary/intermediate interventions. I see these achievement gaps clearly in my own intermediate students and it helps to know that the source often originates much earlier on their little timelines.
ReplyDelete2. I see in my own students the difficulty they have in interpreting test questions. School achievement is based on accuracy of response to test questions. Students can often rely on context to help them through a complex text, but it is the test question that loses them. They get confused on unknown words and complex syntax in the question; thus, the inaccuracy of their response is not so much misunderstanding the passage as it is misunderstanding the question.
3. I think of word schema as the "rich and varied language experiences" and the "word consciousness" levels of circular diagram (Figure 1.1) on p. 17. They are the backdrop for any type of word learning the students will do.