this resource in the hope that you will find it helpful and to provide the background you need to begin integrating digital tools and apps that support word learning into your comprehensive approach to literacy. Appendices B and C offer additional recommendations of texts that support vocabulary learning.
How You Can Use This Book to Advance Schoolwide Vocabulary
There are numerous ways you can use this book to implement a schoolwide or districtwide vocabulary framework. We suggest the following types of activities to help you move forward.
• Establish a literacy leadership team to guide and support effective vocabulary practices.
• Discuss the urgency for vocabulary instruction and the vocabulary gap that exists among many of our students.
• Engage in a faculty-wide book study to increase background knowledge and understanding of effective vocabulary instruction. Select collaborative tools to promote sharing resources and continuing engagement and conversation. Encourage other schools to do the same and engage in an online Twitter chat to share ideas. (Be sure to ask Kimberly or Angela to join in.)
• Discuss what it really means to know a word and how that impacts instruction and assessment.
• Discuss how to create a word-learning culture that supports vocabulary acquisition.
• Discuss how current vocabulary practices relate to research-based, effective instructional practices.
• Determine how to select words to support your students’ academic content learning.
• Select instructional strategies suitable for elementary, secondary, and special populations.
• Integrate digital tools into word learning to practice and review general and academic vocabulary.
• Determine how to implement and support a blended vocabulary program that includes direct strategies, indirect strategies, and digital tools and games.
We provide a wealth of information and strategies in this book to support teachers, literacy teams, and professional learning communities as you discover, learn, and implement instructional strategies. However, if you begin to feel overwhelmed, keep in mind that sometimes simpler is better. You can break this process down into a few basic elements. Following are five simple steps that will help make selecting and teaching vocabulary easy yet effective as you begin to implement common schoolwide practices (Tyson, 2013c).
1. Understand the key characteristics of effective vocabulary instruction (see chapter 2).
2. Identify and sort vocabulary into the three-tiered vocabulary framework (see chapter 3).
3. Create a print-rich environment to support word learning (see chapter 4).
4. Identify and master evidence-based vocabulary strategies (see chapters 5, 6, and 7).
5. Choose digital tools that support word learning (see chapters 5, 6, and 7 and appendix A).
Recap
Vocabulary knowledge undergirds learning both in school and out. It plays a vital role both in learning to read and understanding what is read. If students don’t understand the meaning of words within a novel or other text, they’ll more than likely be unable to comprehend it. It is our goal, in this book, to provide you with the knowledge, skills, and dispositions to equip your students with the vocabulary they need to be successful in school and life.
Read. Think. Engage. We invite you to begin a conversation with us on social media. We always enjoy talking, tweeting, and learning with educators and literacy leaders about how to best address challenges, celebrate accomplishments, and take purposeful next steps toward literacy improvement.
NEXT STEPS
Consider the following questions individually or discuss them with colleagues or in literacy leadership team settings.
Teachers
• Do you see a large vocabulary gap among your students? What are practical steps you can take to begin addressing this gap?
• How does understanding how young children develop vocabulary impact instruction in your classroom or school? How does it impact what you share with parents?
• How would you describe the relationship between vocabulary and comprehension to a colleague? To your students?
Literacy Leadership Teams
• Think about your teaching staff. How familiar do you think your staff members are with the information we shared in this chapter?
• Discuss the vocabulary gap. Does it hold specific relevance for your student population? If so, what explicit steps can you take to address the gap? How can you support staff in doing so?
• Discuss how the staff can make certain that students who enter the school deficient in vocabulary will increase their word knowledge.
• As a team, discuss top takeaways related to the importance of vocabulary instruction. Determine big ideas that you will share with all instructional staff, including paraprofessionals and interventionists.
CHAPTER 1
A Culture of Word Learning
It seems natural to want to begin the process of fostering schoolwide vocabulary learning by digging right in and building a repertoire of effective instructional strategies. And as much as we love seeing teachers embrace research-based vocabulary strategies and integrate them into their daily instruction, the longer we work with teachers, the more we see that we need to first take a step back. Perhaps even more important than the beginning of the work around vocabulary strategies is to first create a culture of word learning—one in which everyone constantly becomes more literate. We concur with leading researchers who point to the importance of creating a schoolwide culture that supports and encourages students’ ongoing learning of new words (Blachowicz et al., 2006).
While the task of addressing students’ deficient vocabulary can seem overwhelming—especially in high-poverty schools—creating a culture that supports building vocabulary is a viable way to address the challenge because that’s where the power of word learning begins. We’ve found that when teachers and leaders take the time to build the culture first and work together to create an environment that supports
