and word meaning to guide and adapt instruction. Vocabulary tests may follow various formats—standardized, teacher created, or online. The following websites offer examples of vocabulary tests and exercises that focus on definitions, parts of speech, synonyms, antonyms, and vocabulary usage in sentences.
➢ VocabTest.com (www.vocabtest.com)
➢ VocabularySize.com (http://my.vocabularysize.com)
➢ Merriam-Webster’s Learner’s Dictionary (http://learnersdictionary.com/quiz/vocabulary-start)
Select Appropriate Interventions
Varying the engagements, representations, actions, and expressions honors learner diversity. For example, varying representations means that the information is not just displayed one way, whether that is auditory or visual. Multiple media representations expand students’ transfer and application of language and concepts. Teachers should use specific tools and strategies to build fluencies and motivation to honor students’ varying prior knowledge and inspire interest. The following research-based interventions connect to individual students and multitiered groupings (Jose, 2015; Maiullo, 2016; Rimbey, McKeown, Beck, & Sanora, 2016; Robb et al., 2014; Wangru, 2016). Teachers can:
➢ Provide informal and frequent understanding checks
➢ Implement daily, weekly, and monthly reviews of prior learning
➢ Offer students ways to figure out unfamiliar vocabulary with each step explained, such as:
• Read the word in the context of a sentence.
• Read the sentence with a blank used in place of the word.
• Substitute a word that makes sense.
• Look up the word with an online tool (such as WordHippo [http://www.wordhippo.com]), a handheld dictionary, or a text’s glossary.
➢ Appropriately scaffold literacy instruction
➢ Value diverse representations
➢ Pace the delivery of content
➢ Provide modeling
➢ Offer direct, guided instruction and then independent practice
➢ Show examples and nonexamples
➢ Practice think-alouds
➢ Ask students to explain their work
➢ Personalize vocabulary with individualized student lists and pictures of words next to their definitions (Pics4Learning [www.pics4learning.com])
➢ Instruct on phonemic awareness and structural analysis
➢ Monitor reader response journals
➢ Provide compartmentalization (for example, character perspective charts)
➢ Reinforce self-questioning
➢ Offer detailed and timely feedback
➢ Reteach and enrich as necessary
Evidence-Based Practice
The National Reading Technical Assistance Center compiles research on vocabulary acquisition and instruction (Butler et al., 2010). Research synthesis highlights the merits of direct instruction and learning beyond definitional knowledge, which means learning a word’s definition as well as what it means in context. Students need to have a command of vocabulary when they speak, read, hear, and write. This involves receptive language in which students are interpreting words, and using or producing language in conversation as well as in print (Kamil & Hiebert, 2005). This understanding includes, but is not limited to, hearing abundant vocabulary that may or may not be within a student’s prior knowledge or interests.
Students also need to know how to interpret vocabulary on standardized testing. Active learning, personalization of word learning, increased word knowledge, and repeated exposure to the words help learners understand vocabulary (Blachowicz & Fisher, 2000). Implementing effective vocabulary instruction and supporting early literacy skills allow students to understand the core vocabulary (Rimbey et al., 2016).
Vocabulary Instruction
Academic and behavioral growth within the general education classroom requires students to access and master core vocabulary. Skills such as identifying academic vocabulary, citing text-based evidence from literature and informational text, creating dynamic essays, evaluating algebraic expressions, and solving multistep word problems all require good teaching practices that connect the reading, writing, mathematical, and cross-curricular vocabulary to students in motivating ways. Applying the vocabulary to build conceptual knowledge is imperative because of curriculum demands and reading complexities as students advance through the grades.
Academic vocabulary enhances students’ understanding of the disciplines. A broader term—academic literacy—is dependent on the contexts within which students practice the literacy (Baumann & Graves, 2010). In school settings, academic literacy connects to the reading proficiency required in content-specific texts and literature (Torgesen et al., 2007). Therefore, effective vocabulary instruction should offer repeated exposure to words, definitional and contextual information, and active, meaningful engagement.
Early Literacy Skills
Teachers must assess students’ early literacy skills through phonological and print awareness with guided questions, oral reads, and word identification to ensure that the next step of appropriate instruction follows. Screening and progress monitoring at set times during the year then steer the tiered instruction. Phonics inventories include teachers synthesizing and analyzing how students pronounce academic vocabulary, which then shed light on students’ basic phonemic skills.
These inventories assess skill levels with phonemic awareness, fluency, and the comprehension of fiction, narrative, and expository text. Informal reading inventories analyze skills such as oral reading, comprehension, and word identification. This may include activities such as reading graded word lists, real and pseudo words, and passages. Teachers assess students on their responses to oral questions and vocabulary comprehension within passages and sentences and from word lists. Every content area and concept has its own vocabulary that teachers must identify and analyze for students with diverse reading skills and levels.
Every content area and concept has its own vocabulary that teachers must identify and analyze for students with diverse reading skills and levels.
It is vital that families provide a literacy-rich environment at home to reinforce skills and objectives with their children. Families can encourage their children to identify, pronounce, decode, and encode letters and sounds in isolation and within words in road signs, recipes, grocery stores, and newspapers. For example, while cooking spaghetti, parents can have their child identify final sounds of words, practice phoneme segmentation, and read the box directions.
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