Helping words grow

Teaching Pre K-8, Jan 1999 by Manning, Maryann

Expanding vocabulary is an important component of any teachers reading and writing framework.

Vocabulary growth in the classroom is as natural as breathing because it's inherent in everything we do during the school day. I test many students who are perceived, by teachers and/or parents, to have reading problems. I find many of these students don't have reading processing problems, but have a limited vocabulary, which alters the level of difficulty of texts they can read.

Words count. A small vocabulary usually goes hand in hand with limited experiences and is also reflected in unfamiliar concepts. Whenever I meet a student with a rich vocabulary, I can usually predict that comprehension will be strong. It's not surprising that teachers have observed what research studies over the years have shown: vocabulary size correlates with success in all areas of the curriculum.

It doesn't take a scholarly study to explain why so many students we teach possess small vocabularies. Challenging words aren't always used in the home or school environment, and the "word diet" on many TV programs includes few new words.

We usually know very quickly which students need special vocabulary attention. I assess vocabulary size when listening to students talk to adults or peers and when they engage in discussion.

Whenever I write about a topic, I reflect on my own teaching practices. Sometimes I conclude: I was really a good teacher, but I have some doubts about my vocabulary instruction. I thought that putting difficult words and their meanings on bulletin boards was helpful, and perhaps, an extensive vocabulary was best acquired through direct instruction or memorization. Equally distressing is my recollection of my early teaching days - students copied meanings of words from the dictionary as part of my spelling program.

Dictionaries. I have committed several major teaching transgressions concerning the use of the dictionary. I learned, after many years, that you can't find a word in a dictionary unless you have the exact spelling - and some knowledge of the word's meaning! I now know that the dictionary doesn't teach vocabulary unless you read it from cover to cover. In spite of my previous misuse of dictionaries, I do have lots of dictionaries of varying levels and types in my classroom to check meanings and spellings.

I want each student to have his/her own personal dictionary and have a place to categorize new words. They can be teacher/student made, but one commercial product I especially like for primary through middle school are the Zaner-Bloser Ward Books.

Over the years I have learned much about teaching vocabulary in direct and incidental ways. I know effective vocabulary instruction can't be abstract; I must assist students in attaching personal meanings by relating them to their own experiences, visualizations and backgrounds. A new word will first become part of a student's listening, speaking, reading or writing vocabulary and eventually will be transferred to a new context.

I'm now aware of the necessity to activate prior knowledge. Semantic analysis has many different names such as mapping, webbing and feature analysis. These procedures help our students place new words in their existing schema when we make connections among the words they already know about a specific topic or concept

Teaching in an interdisciplinary nature helps students learn words within a framework of constructing new knowledge. During theme immersions, semantic relationships develop as students collaborate on topics and, through their research and discussion, attach meanings to words.

Power-packed. The classroom environment is a powerful place to encourage learning vocabulary, and as the teacher, I set the tone by sharing my own curiosity about words. If I find the study of affixes interesting, my students will follow suit.

I was delighted recently to see a bulletin board with the caption, "We Are Etymologists."

Students had selected words because they wanted to know more. Each word had the name of the student who proposed the word, origin, meanings and examples of the word used in context. Obviously, this was an interactive classroom where everyone respected each other and words.

Believing in the use of real experiences and objects is often challenging because of practical and financial concerns. If we cannot visit a place, a resource person can provide a connection with a topic. Additionally, we can demonstrate many processes and enact some events in the classroom.

One of the successful ways to develop vocabulary is within the context of literature. Being careful not to ruin the literature when reading aloud, we can talk about one or two unknown words after concluding the reading. Introducing them before the reading can be helpful, too. A student can know a lot about a topic but lack an understanding of the words and jargon of the subject or concept.

Shared and guided reading lessons give us opportunities to teach in such a way that all three cueing systems (graphophonic, syntactic and semantic) are kept intact. We don't want students mouthing words; simply saying words doesn't increase vocabularies.