Lesson 19 Vocabulary

[Desiderato Chouinard]

Besidesthat, my vocabulary book contained just enough lessons to do one per week. Even though the words in that vocabulary book were interesting, many of those words were not going to be useful in the future. In fact, most of them were not included in the reading and writing my students were doing in my class or in others.

When I learned about the brain and began to understand memory, I researched how the brain is wired for reading and the importance of vocabulary was more evident. Getting vocabulary words into long-term memory was certainly key to helping students understand and remember content.

How do teachers find the time to teach vocabulary, especially teachers in departmentalized situations in which they may only have periods lasting 40-45 minutes? An important piece of research caught my eye and filled me with hope. Students can benefit from brief encounters with words.

Most of my time is spent doing professional development with teachers these days. As I embarked on my vocabulary journey, I found myself challenging those teachers to create lessons in 10 minutes or less.

First, I modeled several lessons and let the naysayers time me. Then we had to evaluate both the necessity of the lesson and its level of success. Would a five-minute introduction to a word be valuable? Could two minutes of transition time really help with word learning, and better yet, allow for word ownership? In every instance, sometimes with some tweaking, the answer was yes.

Use academic vocabulary in your classroom on a regular basis and you will begin to hear your students using those same words. If we can explicitly teach about 300 words per year to our students, it can make a big difference in their vocabularies.

Some students will learn about 3000 or 4000 words per year due to the literacy that surrounds them, while others have limited access and will only learn 1000. Imagine how much you will be helping those students who have limited outside access to greater vocabulary.

Among her many other books (all from ASCD) are How to Teach So Students Remember, Second Edition ; Social-Emotional Learning and the Brain: Strategies to Help Your Students Thrive; and The Essential 25: Teaching the Vocabulary That Makes or Breaks Student Understanding. See all of her MiddleWeb articles here.

Word Up Schedule

The exercises and sections within each Word Up unit can be assigned flexibly and accommodate any schedule. Use them as homework, group work, independent practice or as components of an after-school program. See a sample schedule for grades 2-5 here and a sample schedule for grades 6-8 here.

Using the Assessments

Each unit of Word Up includes a quiz to assess student mastery of the vocabulary words. You can find it by clicking on Quiz in the left-side menu. In addition, each grade level includes a pre-assessment and post-assessment. At the end of the unit, measure vocabulary growth by comparing results on the pre- and post- assessments. Find the pre- and post-assessments for each Word Up grade level here.

If you aren't sure which Word Up level is best for your students, use our diagnostic test to determine the appropriate grade level.

Worksheet Sequence

Give students more practice with the words by following the exercise sequence. This sequence will supplement the Quick Review and mini games to provide additional exposure to word usage and meaning. It is not necessary to include all suggestions; instead, choose the ones that you think will work best for your students. See the exercise sequence for elementary grades (Word Up Turquoise, Red, Orange and Indigo) and the exercise sequence for middle grades (Word Up Green, Yellow and Blue).

Using the Extension Questions

Each Word Up has writing questions that test knowledge of words and allow students to practice using the vocabulary words in new contexts. See the list of questions for all levels here.

Word Rep

Increase student engagement and excitement by making each student a word rep. Each student will be responsible for one word per unit and will be the class expert on that word during the unit. Learn more about how to get your students repping words.

Word Wizard

Students will be surprised by how often they see their Word Up vocabulary words in the real world. Isabel Beck, an expert on direct vocabulary instruction, created an ongoing game called Word Wizard in which students can earn credit on unit tests for using vocabulary words in their speech and writing or for bringing in examples of the word from the real world. Learn how to set up Word Wizard here.

Enhance students' vocabulary comprehension and spice up your lesson with mini games! These games are intentionally designed to require minimal preparation and basic rules so that you can fill those remaining minutes before the bell or divide up a long lesson with a quick, energetic break. The games can be used to review the current unit's words and older ones, and they serve as an excellent way to check for understanding. These games can also be expanded for longer play and review, which may be especially useful in after-school and summer-school sessions. Get playing!

But knowing I needed better vocabulary lessons was one thing. Figuring out how to teach meaningful vocabulary lessons was another. I struggled with how to teach it and when to squeeze it into an already packed schedule.

Early in my teaching, I would assign the five words from the weekly anthology story. I would tell them what they meant on Monday and then give them a multiple choice test on Friday. The kids passed the tests, but never truly learned the words. Also, the words from the basal rarely ever appeared in other literature that we were reading. It was terrible, but it was the only resource that the curriculum provided. I knew that if I was going to make vocabulary meaningful for my students I was going to have to start from scratch with my own words, lessons, activities and assessments.

So I did lots of research! I read blog posts and books about vocabulary and word acquisition. My very favorite resource is the book Word Nerds. I loved all of her ideas, but I needed to make the entire process simple and manageable in my busy classroom. After lots of brainstorming and trial and error, I finally have a vocabulary system that works, is easy to implement and that gets my students excited about word study.

It is not enough to just talk about the words on Monday. On Tuesday we spend another 10 minutes on our meaningful vocabulary. As a class, we come up with two synonyms and two antonyms (or non-examples) for each of our words. This process has really helped my students to expand their vocabulary and understand multiple meaning words. The examples and non-examples help to make the new vocabulary words more concrete for my students. I also like to throw in some unique or fancy antonyms and synonyms from time to time.

Tuesday is really all about talking about words and why they are or are not good examples. We have conversations about parts of speech and verb tenses. Students start to see that the best synonyms are the same part of speech and tense as the original word. Sometimes the kids will start debating a bit about which synonym or antonym we should choose to record. Since I have taught them to be respectful, these debates really just deepen their word understanding. It is magical!

Students have aha moments when they realize how affixes change the meaning of a word! We are still actively talking about vocabulary, but we are also hitting the reading and language standards associated with prefixes and suffixes.

On Thursday I give students time to draw a small and simple representation for each of their words. The drawings must somehow show the meaning of the word. For example, when the word was gallop- one of my students drew a horse running. When the word was clutch- one of my students drew a hand holding a purse.

At the end of our unit, during the 9th week, we review all 40 of the words from the unit. At the end of the 9th week, students take a summative assessment. I want to be certain that my students are retaining all of this information and not just learning it for the week. This same assessment can be used as a pretest at the beginning of the unit as well. It is challenging, but my students have been very successful!

I make two copies of the data chart for each student. One page is used for the entire unit! I keep a chart for myself and ask students to keep a chart as well. As I am grading the bi-weekly assessments, I highlight any word that a student misses. This only takes a few minutes. I pass back the assessment to the students and quickly go over the correct answers. Students will then circle any missed words on their chart. A student who misses a lot of words on a regular basis, will receive flash cards and extra practice. A student who misses a couple words here and there is asked to review the missed words throughout the week using their journal.

Students are generally missing more words at the start of the year and as we study words, I am noticing an improvement in our overall ability to learn new words. The chart helps students to see that they getting better! It can also be shown to parents during conferences.

Thanks for reading! I do not use words from a basal for two reasons: 1. These words rarely seem to appear in other literature that my kids read. 2. I do not use a basal because it is not engaging to my students. I use book clubs (or literature circles) instead. Since all of my groups are reading different books, it is not feasible to just choose words from their books. Instead, I did lots of research and choose tier 2 words that are commonly used in 3rd grade text. After testing it for 9 weeks, I can honestly tell you that our words have shown up over and over in class read aloud and book club books. My students get so excited when that happens!

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