Strategic Vocabulary/Language Instruction - L. Hoffman
TOPICS
1. What’s your essential (BIG – OVERARCHING) question for the unit or series of
lessons?
2. What Tier 2 and Tier 3 vocabulary have you selected to teach?
3. What “juicy” sentence are you pulling out to deconstruct and reconstruct?
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Text sets:
EQ: How do different cultures regulate their environments and promote different
lifestyles?
TARGETING VOCABULARY
TIER 1 – everyday language – Students should already know these words. Check.
Examples from the juicy sentence - long, great, traveling, find, salt, people
TIER 2 – academic vocabulary across content areas. Students may have had
opportunities to learn these words in other content-areas OR the teacher may find the
need to teach some of these words.
Examples from the juicy sentence – trade, distances, exchange, journeys, items,
sometimes, dates, desert
TIER 3 – academic vocabulary that is content-area specific. Students will only be able to
know these words if the content-area teacher explicitly teaches them.
Examples from the juicy sentence – Tuareg, trade caravans, Sahara
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WORD PLAY
Only target 8 to 10 words during vocabulary instruction:
Selected words:
journeys, exchange, items, sometimes, Tuareg, trade caravans, desert, Sahara
Create vocabulary cards – using index cards or sentence strips
Tuareg
nomadic (wandering from place to place for
different purposes) people of the middle
Sahara in Africa
Sahara
desert in Africa that can be found from the
north to the middle of the continent
journeys
trips
exchange
trade – you give me something, I give you
something
items
things
sometimes
desert
some of the time, not all of time, not every
single day
dry, hot region with sand
trade caravans
trips made for trading
GETTING STUDENTS TO COMPREHEND COMPLEX
TEXT
From the Non-fiction tradebook: Sahara by Jan Reynolds
JUICY SENTENCE: complex sentence, with opportunities to teach
tier 2 and 3 vocabulary, and refer back to the essential question
Sometimes the Tuareg make long journeys called trade caravans,
traveling great distances across the desert to exchange such items as
salt and dates with other people for items they need but cannot find in
the Sahara.
Deconstructing the juicy sentence into small pieces of imbedded
information in simple sentence form:
Some of the time, the Tuareg make long trips.
These long trips are also called caravans.
These caravans are used for trade.
These caravans travel far.
These caravans travel across the desert.
The desert is a dry, hot region.
The caravans travel to trade items or things.
These things are salt and dates.
The Tuareg trade with other people.
The Tuareg trade to get things they can not find where they live in the desert.
Reconstructing the juicy sentence so that students bring all of the
information back to the complex sentence level:
Sometimes (some of the time) the Tuareg (nomadic people of the
Sahara Desert in Africa) make long journeys (trips) called trade
caravans (trips made for trading), traveling great distances across the
desert (hot, dry region) to exchange (trade) such items (things) as salt
and dates with other people for items they need but cannot find in the
Sahara (desert in Africa that can be found from the north to the middle
of the continent).
Questions - So that students can use the new vocabulary in speaking
and writing about the content
1. Why are the Tuareg nomadic people?
2. How does their desert environment shape their lives?
3. Why do they sometimes have to travel long distances?
4. What kinds of items do they use to trade with other people?
5. Why is the Sahara a difficult environment for the Tuareg people?
OR use Sentence Starters:
1. If you were to describe the lifestyle of the Tuareg people, you would say that
_____________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________.
2. If you were living in the Sahara Desert, life might be like
_____________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________.