Teaching Vocabulary - 2 Tier vocabulary
This is a summary of the EAL/D Vocabulary Reporting Forum that Melanie Rios and Anne van der
Graaf went to on Wednesday 19th November 2014. We came away with many great ideas and have
plans to propose an action research project to undertake with targeted students in Stage 3 in 2015.
We would also like to have an opportunity early next year to share what we have learnt with the staff
so that this teaching of tier 2 vocabulary can be embedded into classroom learning.
The following are some of the main points made by the keynote speaker, Paul Dufficy and the lessons
learnt from the teachers’ findings from their action research projects for teaching vocabulary.
Paul Dufficy - teacher educator at the University of Sydney - experienced ESL teacher both in Australia and overseas.
The teaching of vocabulary is one of the most neglected areas in teaching.
Vocabulary needs to be taught:
 explicitly
 implicitly (wide reading & conversations)
 using multimodal methods
 with regular exposure
 through making connections
The teaching of vocabulary needs to be embedded in classroom learning. We need to raise the words
to the consciousness of the students in all classes - we need to teach vocabulary mindfully!
The number of words that a child knows when they come to school correlates closely with their
socioeconomic status. It is not only the case for those of non-English speaking background.
EAL/D students may come to school with only 5 000 words in their first language and very few if any
in English.
If students come to school with a vocabulary deficit they can fall further and further behind because
the greater the vocabulary, the greater the comprehension. Which means the more they are likely to
be able to read which in turn leads to a greater vocabulary.
A less motivated reader may only have a vocabulary of 100 000 words, the average reader has about
1 000 000 words in their vocabulary and the highly motivated reader has 10 - 50 million words.
The vocabulary in our curriculum is not found in everyday conversations. We will not acquire
vocabulary without mindful conversations. As school goes on the vocabulary demand increases
enormously and our vocabulary poor students fall further and further behind.
Where do we teach vocabulary?
 In substantial conversations
 Using interactional scaffolding - thinking points, big questions, philosophical issues
We don’t want narrow questions and to avoid this we need slow teaching.
- Before we engage with a text (frontloading)
- While we engage with the text (glossing)
- After we engage with the text 1 (focusing)
- After we engage with the text 2 (recycling)
When? Daily!!
Teaching vocabulary should be a daily focus.
- Every learning sequence
- At set times (first thing/ last thing/ transitions)
- In the playground (give the children word play - push their ideas)
- In the home (get them to ask their parents questions and engage with parents or g’parents)
- At assembly
- On excursions
- On a classroom blog
How?
We need to remember the importance of vocabulary. Language is the major tool for thinking.
We need to adopt the philosophy - “I want the children to be better thinkers than I am.” And,
“I want to challenge children’s minds by asking the right questions”
As teachers we need to:
1. Hand over - give the students the raw materials in a way that allows them to grapple and puzzle
with language.
2. Engage students - the teacher needs to be passionate and curious about language and allow this
passion to be seen and experienced by the students.
3. Assist the children’s performance with thinking, grappling and being engaged.
Start by finding out how well they know the words. This can be revisited during and after the learning
process.
Levels of word knowledge
Have never
heard or seen
the word
before
Have seen
and/or heard
but not sure
what it means
Have seen
and/or heard
and have a feel
for the
meaning
I know what it
means and
where it’s used
but don’t use it
myself
I know what it
means and I
use it
I know what it
means, I use it
can explain its
meaning, and
know its
etymology
Working with words- Look at:
- literal/ common meaning
- connotations associated with words. (e.g how used in school/ home/ by different people)
- polysemy (Same words different meanings)
- morphological options (change according to tense/ number - can be erratic)
- collocations (do they work together - eg. a comfortable friend? No - a like-minded friend)
- spelling and pronunciation
- context - when to use a word and when not to.
- synonyms/antonyms/ etymology.
What?
Vocabulary can be classified into three tiers:
Tier 1 words - These encompass everyday, run of the mill playground language.
Tier 3 words- low frequency words that are rarely used which are usually specific to one domain e.g.
science, medicine, computers. These words can be learnt at the same rate by all learners because
when they are introduced they are new to all - English speakers and EAL/D students alike.
Tier 2 words - are the ones that give our vocabulary poor students the most trouble. They are
higher frequency words that are used and found across many domains. They characterize written text
and it is imperative that we take time each day to teach them richly, deeply and meaningfully!
The majority of them have a Latin or Greek etymology.
Our criteria for teaching them should be:
- Are they frequently used?
- Can they be worked with?
If the answer is yes, then we must explicitly teach them.
As a teacher we should keep a record of these words as the students come across them in their
reading and learning. We need to build up a weekly word wall and keep changing it as the words
change.
We can find synonyms for them and build clines for their strength or richness e.g. whispered,
murmured, spoke, cried, shouted, shrieked.
If looking for a particular word in a cloze passage can play a game - Centre circle is wanted word,
others are similar words. Students try to guess the word.
Synonym Cloze passages are great for teaching tier 2 words because they help to extend the
vocabulary and to understand the meanings and strengths of the words well enough to choose the
best word.
See PETAA publication e:update 012 Cloze Encounters by Paul Dufficy
Also for more ideas for vocabulary teaching refer to
http://www.appa.asn.au/projects/Vocabulary-article.pdf an article written by Anne
Bayetto from Flinders University on Vocabulary
Summary of ideas used for teaching and lessons learnt from the action research projects
- Students must teach the vocabulary they have discovered in their SOLE research - this was to move
away from students reciting dictionary meanings that they didn’t understand.
- Students needed part of the lesson to frontload vocabulary and to learn the skills needed for
research.
- One aim was for the students to generate a discussion about the COGs topic with parents in their
home language. The students would write the word in their first language on a palm card with the
word in English underneath.
- Used www.dogonews.com to research and build field knowledge for articles in easier to understand
English.
- Zap Game - targeted words on paddle pop sticks plus word zap on one stick. Go around circle using
words in sentences until come to Zap stick and then start all over again.
- Barrier games crossword puzzles - children give clues for words in form of synonyms. One student
has all the across words while the other has the down words.
- Use the Levels of Word Knowledge Chart (see above in Paul Dufficy ideas) to pretest knowledge of
words, test midway a couple of times and post test. Words are maked in different colours each time so
students can see their progress.
- Teach shades of meaning with different tones of a colour(paint sample strips) - take out words from
story and plot profile for intensity in the story; This encourages rich talk, makes students aware of
author’s word choice and use of vocabulary to increase the intensity in a story E.g the texts Fire and
Flood by Jackie French.
- Book Creator is a good app for recording the students’ work in a book form on Ipads.
- Students use tier 2 words to ask questions. The other students answer yes or no and use tier 2 words
to justify their answers.
- Look at characters in texts - discuss what they are thinking, feeling or saying and students make
these into noun groups to be used in their writing. Have the students act out the stories before they
write.
-Don’t cover too many topics. Simplify to explicitly teach.
- Teaching songs are a good way of teaching and using tier 2 words.
- ‘All About Me” box. Make a hole in the middle of the poster for face and then hair, neck and shoulders
drawn around hole. Flaps are made with coloured paper. The questions are on top of the flaps and the
answers are written underneath.
Findings
-Must teach slowly and explicitly
- Make connections with the students’ country of origin.
- Make the words ‘high challenge’ wprds.
-Set up lessons with carefully scaffolded and well-chosen activities, specific to the students and the
task.
- Explicit teaching of vocabulary, particularly tier 2 is vital to comprehension.
- Language and learning experiences need to be integrated.
-Start with talk and build through reading to written.
-Use best practice models to help students to learn.