Issue 17: Vocabulary Instruction for Learners with Language-Based Learning Disabilities | Dr Sharon M. Ware

Vocabulary plays a crucial role in reading and is important for both decoding and comprehension. Children with strong vocabulary knowledge can identify and remember new words more easily, and word knowledge enables students to understand the overall message of the text they are reading. Children naturally learn many common nouns, verbs, and other parts of speech by listening to the talk of their parents and caregiver; they don't need to be taught simple words like clock, bed, and sister. However, actively helping children, especially those with language-based learning disabilities, build a broad vocabulary and love of words cannot be neglected. Words – spoken and written – are all around us. Teachers and families have an important role in igniting their interest and love for how words can enrich our lives and in teaching children the meaning of specific words. A deep and broad vocabulary supports listening and reading comprehension and enhances children's writing ability. Teachers can also teach strategies that children can use to determine the meaning of words when reading independently.

Building Word Consciousness

Word consciousness refers to awareness and appreciation of words, how they are used, and their importance in communicating ideas. Interest in words can be part of every day at home and in school; one of the most important things parents and teachers can do to help children become word consciousness is to demonstrate and model an interest in words and wordplay. Something as simple as reciting nursery rhymes and tongue twisters to children builds their awareness of the sound structure of words and that words can be entertaining. Parents and teachers can be mindful of opportunities to use sophisticated and interesting words when speaking to children. For example, instead of saying, "Have a good day!" say, "Wishing you a delightful day!" or "I hope you find today exhilarating!" These simple interactions can help children appreciate the subtleties of word meanings and ignite their curiosity about language. Reading joke books and puns, playing games like Charades and Scrabble, and solving crossword puzzles are fun ways for families to foster word consciousness.

To increase word consciousness, teachers and families can:

• Model using interesting and sophisticated words throughout the day.
• Draw attention to words, their meanings, and their use.
• Read good literature aloud.
• Have fun with words and language.

Ideas for having fun with language

Teach Idioms

Explain that idioms are phrases that mean something different from the individual words, like "raining cats and dogs," "she's as cool as a cucumber," and "that work was a piece of cake."

Invite children to share idioms they may have heard. Children can work in groups to:

• Create a drawing of the literal meaning of an idiom.
• Act out the literal meaning AND the figurative meaning for the class.
• See if the class can guess the meaning.

Teach word scales

Word scales, or semantic gradients, are a continuum of words that vary by degree of meaning. For example, "jogging" is faster than "walking." This activity extends children's understanding of antonyms and enhances their ability to make skillful and precise word choices when speaking or writing.

Choose a word like "hot," draw a line, and place the word in the middle.

Have children brainstorm temperature words that fall between cold and hot and hot and scalding. Encourage them to explain why they believe a word belongs in a specific position.

Create a vocabulary notebook

A vocabulary notebook allows children to record new vocabulary words and track new words as they hear them outside of school. The Teaching Reading Sourcebook provides a template for creating a Vocabulary Hot Shot Notebook. Students record new vocabulary with the definition and then look for occurrences of the word in text and conversation, inside and outside school.

Specific Word Learning

Although most words are learned incidentally through conversation and reading, children still require explicit and extended instruction in school. Good vocabulary teaching gets students excited about words and leads them to pay closer attention to new words they hear in conversation and read-aloud stories. Explicit and extended instruction leads to the deep knowledge needed for students to be confident using these words in their writing.

How to select words to teach

One proven method for choosing words for specific instruction is the Three-Tier System designed by Beck & McKeown. Tier One includes common words that typically don't need to be taught, like hot, night, and chair. Tier Three is made up of vocabulary specific to a subject like science or social studies, such as photosynthesis, ecosystem, and federalism. Tier-Two is the hot spot for finding meaningful words for explicit word instruction. These are widely used words that students don't yet know and are likely to encounter across a wide range of reading. Tier Two words are important to comprehension of the text being read and can typically be explained in simple terms using concepts that children understand. The vocabulary chosen for instruction varies by the child's age, but words like enormous, pursue, and collide can be taught and understood by children in their first year of school who understand the concepts of big, chase, and bump!

Where to find words

Children's books provide a rich source of vocabulary words that are new terms for concepts children already know. For example, the young children's book Molly Rides the School Bus by Julie Brillhart uses words like timid, reluctant, and frantic to describe Molly's experience riding a bus for the first time. In Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson, often read by older children, words appropriate for vocabulary instruction include anticipate, conspicuous, and repulsive.

How to teach tier-two words

Explicit vocabulary instruction is most effective when teachers:

1. Provide clear and understandable definitions.
2. Use the word in the context of the story and demonstrate use in other contexts.
3. Offer students multiple opportunities to interact with words.
4. Review words and provide additional learning opportunities.

-> Provide clear and understandable definitions

Teachers should present meanings of vocabulary words through direct and unambiguous instruction. Meanings should be taught using clear, consistent, and understandable wording. Dictionaries often provide definitions that confuse children, but there are some useful online sources of child-friendly definitions, and teachers can use their creativity to create understandable definitions.

Definitions can be reinforced with pictures, examples and non-examples, and gestures, which are especially helpful for second language learners.

-> Use the word in the context of the story and demonstrate use in other contexts

When introducing a new vocabulary word, teachers should also provide examples of words used in contexts different from the story.

-> Offer students multiple opportunities to use the word

Provide children opportunities to discuss words in extended discourse before and after reading and give them activities that challenge them to process word meanings at a deeper and more complex level.

-> Review words and provide additional learning opportunities

Storybooks should be read to children multiple times, and students should be given the opportunity to discuss and use new vocabulary within and across lessons.

Word Learning Strategies

Much vocabulary is learned through independent reading, and children don't always have someone nearby who can help them understand unknown vocabulary. Students need tools to help them figure out meanings on their own in order to comprehend the text. Word-learning strategies we can teach include:

1. How to use dictionaries to confirm and expand knowledge of word meanings.
2. How to use knowledge of word parts (morphemes) to figure out the meaning.
3. How to use the context to work out the meanings of words in the text

-> Teach students to use dictionaries to confirm and expand their knowledge of word meanings

Students need to learn more than the mechanics of finding dictionary entries; they need to be taught how to find and use the correct information from the definitions provided.

-> Teach students to use their knowledge of word parts (morphemes) to figure out the meaning

Morphemes are units of meaning. A morpheme may be a whole word bake that can stand alone or a word part that adds to or changes the meaning of a word – changing bake to baker. Word parts offer students clues to the meaning of words.

Important word learning strategies to teach include:

• Explicitly teach students the meaning of prefixes and suffixes and how to recognize them in words.
• Teach common word families, like invent, inventing, inventor, and invention.
• Teach common Greek and Latin roots.

-> Teach students strategies for using context to determine word meanings

Strategy for Using Context Clues:

When you come across a word and are not sure of the meaning:

1. Re-read the sentence to see if there is a clue to the meaning.
2. Look for clues in the sentences before and after the sentence with the unknown word.
3. Using your clues, try to figure out the meaning of the word.
4. Test out the meaning in the sentence to see if it works.

Students typically know between 25,000 and 50,000 words at the culmination of high school. To reach this goal, children need to learn 3000 to 4000 new words each year. Broader and deeper word knowledge leads to better reading comprehension and more skilled writing. Students, especially those with language-based learning disabilities, need families and teachers to support them in developing word consciousness, provide explicit and extended instruction of specific words, and teach students strategies for independent word learning. Vocabulary is a skill that has no end point – new words enter our lexicon almost daily. Take a minute to think about some words you've learned in the past few years...words are an amazing and exciting reflection of our history and humanity.

References

• Beck, I. L., McKeown, M. G., & Kucan, L. (2013). Bringing words to life: Robust vocabulary instruction. Guilford Press.
• Collins English dictionary | definitions, translations, example ... Collins English Dictionary. (© Collins 2023). [collinsdictionary.com]
• Coyne, M. D., McCoach, D. B., Ware, S. M., Loftus-Rattan, S. M., Baker, D. L., Santoro, L. E., & Oldham, A. C. (2022). Supporting vocabulary development within a multitiered system of support: Evaluating the efficacy of supplementary kindergarten vocabulary intervention. Journal of Educational Psychology, 114(6), 1225–1241. [doi.org]
• Graves, M. F., & Watts-Taffe, S. (2007). For the love of words: Fostering word consciousness in young readers. The Reading Teacher, 62(3), 185-193. [doi.org]
• Honig, B., Diamond, L., & Gutlohn, L. (2017). Teaching Reading Sourcebook (3rd ed.). CORE, Oakland, CA.
• Lane, H. B., & Allen, S. A. (2010). The vocabulary rich classroom: Modeling sophisticated word use to promote word consciousness and vocabulary growth. The Reading Teacher, 63(5), 362-370. [doi.org]
• Neugebauer, S. R., Gamez, P. B., Coyne, M. D., Cólon, I. T., McCoach, D. B., & Ware, S. M. (2017). Promoting word consciousness to close the vocabulary gap in young word learners. The Elementary School Journal, 118(1), 28-52. [doi.org]

Dr Sharon M Ware

Sharon is an associate professor at the University of Saint Joseph, where she prepares aspiring teachers to provide effective instruction in reading, writing, and spelling. Although she began her professional life in financial analysis, she found her true calling as an educator while volunteering at her son’s school and discovering how many children were struggling to learn how to read. Sharon is an advocate for those struggling with dyslexia and other reading disabilities and is passionate about preparing teachers who can respond to their needs. She has a Master’s in Language and Literacy from the Harvard Graduate School of Education and a Ph.D. in Special Education from the University of Connecticut.

Extracts from Dystinct Magazine