Vocabulary Instruction
Ideas to ponder
What we already know
A little bit of data
Before they come to us
45 million - Number of words a 4year old has heard if he/she comes
from a home with a rich literacy
environment.
13 million - Number of words a 4year old has heard if not from a rich
literacy environment.
Vocabulary muscle
17 for every 1,000
In adult to adult conversations,
adults will use 17 rare words for
every 1,000 words they say.
11 for every 1,000
In adult to child conversations (rare
word knowledge helps SAT )
Rare words on TV
22 for every 1,000 = # of rare
words on the Travel Channel,
History Channel, PBS and
Biography Channel
3 for every 1,000 = # of rare
words on prime time network
television
Rare words in print
30 for every 1,000 = # of rare words
in children's books
53 for every 1,000 = # of rare words
in comic books
128 for every 1,000 = # of rare
words in expository books,
chemistry texts, physics, etc.
Matthew Effect (from the
Bible - Book of Matthew:
“the rich shall get richer
and the poor, poorer”) =
For students in poor
literacy environments, the
achievement gap gets
larger over time.
“Getting” a word
 Students reading at
grade level need to see
a new word 10 times
before they know it
(hear it, see it, read it,
play with it, write it)
 If students are reading
below grade level, they
need to see a new word
40 times before they
know it.
--Kylene Beers
NAEP results for 4th & 8th grade correlated with amount of time spent
reading
score
average minutes/day reading
90 percentile
40.4 minutes/day
50 percentile
12.9 minutes/day
10 percentile
1.6 minutes/day
#words see/year
2,357,000
601,000
51,000
(students in 10th percentile may see 51,000 words per year, but they still need to
see the word 40x before it gets it into their automatic memory)
Solution #1
Reading is Fundamental
Reading is the most important
way to build one’s vocabulary
 Reading aloud is the “single most
important activity for building the
knowledge required for eventual success
in reading (Anderson, 1985)
 There is a strong relationship between
vocabulary & reading comprehension
 Vocabulary knowledge is related to
students’ reading achievement (Francis &
Simpson, 2003)
Reading and Vocabulary
 Primary grades learn
approximately 3,000 new
words/year. If students do a
modest amount of reading
(3,000 words/day), they will
encounter 10,000 different
words in a year.
 25 - 50% of a student’s
annual vocabulary growth
can be attributed to
incidental learning from
context while reading.
Vocabulary Acquisition:
Implications for Struggling
Learners
 Students need
extensive reading
instruction
 Students need direct
instruction in wordlearning strategies
 Students need a strong,
systematic educational
support to become
successful independent
word learners
Good Intentions that May
Cause Harm
The Old Way
 20 words per week
given on Monday
 Look up words in
dictionary
 Write a sentence
 Test on Friday
 Never see the words
again
What’s Wrong With the Old
Way?
 These traditional
practices do not
increase students’
speaking, reading,
and writing
language. (Allen,
1999).
Looking it up in the dictionary
 Looking up definitions
 Dictionary definitions
leads to only a
superficial
understanding and
rapid forgetting of words
(McKeown, 1993)
 Most entries are so
isolated from context
that students were
unable to use the
definition in a
productive manner (Nist
& Olejnik, 1995)
are not always
complete enough to
help students
comprehend
 Students must know a
word in order to
understand the
definition or choose the
best definition for the
particular context (Miller
& Gildea, 1987)
Candle
 “A solid, usually
cylindrical mass of
tallow, wax, or other
fatty substance with
an axially embedded
wick that is burned
to provide light.”
(American Heritage,
2000).
Nonsensical sentences
 “My parents like to
 “The priest was
erode a lot.”
 “Erode” meaning eat
out (from the root e-,
ex- = out + rodere =
gnaw)
piety.”
 If students don’t
know their grammar,
then they don’t know
how to use the
different forms of the
word in their
sentences.
Context Clues
 Teaching vocabulary
through context clues is
ineffective, especially
for struggling readers.
 Clues are subtle,
challenging readers to
infer in order to define
unknown words.
 The polysemous nature
of words are hard to
grasp from one context.
What I have learned
Students in
the lower
stanines
need to be
given a
variety of
vocabulary
Opportunities
should be
provided to allow
students with
differing learning
styles to play with
words in order to
raise their word
confidence.
Although the researchers
agreed on what wasn’t
working, they also
agreed that there is no
one solution for effective
vocabulary instruction,
however, there needs to
BE specific vocabulary
instruction, especially
for struggling readers.
Solutions varied from
single strategies like
matching games to
complex-wide,
systematic revamping of
curriculum to include
cooperative learning
groups, high-interest
textbooks and training of
all content-area
teachers in several key
activities for vocabulary
acquisition and contentspecific reading
strategies.
Next Step:
Solution #2
The K-12 Vocabulary Plan