Building+Academic+Vocabulary


 * Building Academic Vocabulary **

Using the manual's list of 7,923 terms, school and district teams can choose the most important vocabulary terms they want to teach to all students. All vocabulary terms are extracted from national standards documents, across 11 subject areas, and are organized into four grade-level intervals: K-2, 3-5, 6-8, and 9-12. Included in the manual are all the tips and guidelines teachers need to implement this approach:

How to choose which academic terms to teach at the district, school, or classroom level A six-step process for teaching vocabulary terms so students develop deep understandings of the terms Fun and engaging activities and games that help students add to their knowledge of vocabulary terms as they review and play with the terms they have recorded in their student notebooks  //**This book changed the way I teach vocabulary! I've tried for years to improve vocabulary instruction in my classroom, and using the strategies from this book is the first time I've observed real, solid and enjoyable vocabulary learning in my students! This book has everything you need "soup to nuts" to set up a vocabulary program in your room. The best part is, you can do in about 15 minutes per day! I can't recommend this book highly enough. It's an easy read. The vocabulary lists make up the bulk of the book. Reading the actual information in this book took me less than an hour! It is a tremendous resource I refer back to all the time!
 * Teacher Reviews: **

I found some great advice on teaching vocabulary for my middle school social studies class. I especially liked the graphic organizer where students must write their own definition and draw a picture to illustrate the concept. I used it for some Ancient Civilization terms and my students quickly grasped the concepts I taught them.**// 

**As we reflected this year on how to improve our reading instruction, the majority agreed that vocabulary workbooks were not the most effective strategy. So how do we improve vocabulary instruction? How do we work together to establish a consistent plan for EMS? How would you answer these questions? What are we doing in our own classrooms that we can share. Research led to Marzano's Six Steps. Let's read it together this summer and discuss it as we go, so that we can develop a middle school approach next Fall. Click on the discussion tab above to add your comments. Please continue to read and add your comments. Respond to your colleagues comments to expand our thinking through our group dialog.

Research & Other Links on Marzano Below: ** i. Provide a description, explanation, or example of the new term. ii. Ask students to restate the description, explanation, or example in their own words. iii. Ask students to construct a picture, symbol, or graphic representating the term or phrase. iv. Engage students periodically in activities that help them add to their knowledge of the terms in their notebooks. v. Periodically ask students to discuss the terms with one another. vi. Involve students periodically in games that allow them to play with terms (Marzano, R. J. & Pickering D. J. (2005). Build¬ing Academic Vocabulary: Teacher’s Manual. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.)
 * __Marzano Six-Step Process __ **
 * Use the following process to provide direct instruction on words that are critical to new content for the most powerful learning (Marzano et al. 2002):

Marzano adds “Teachers must block out time for the direct instruction described in the first three steps of the process, and decide how often and when the activities in the last three steps will be used. These planning decisions will vary from teacher to teacher and will differ somewhat in elementary versus secondary settings” (Build¬ing Academic Vocabulary: Teacher’s Manual. p. 30)

He then goes on to offer some suggestions for scheduling academic vocabulary instruction: 1) When and how often will you present new terms? You might decide it takes 15 minutes to present three new terms and take students through the first three steps of the process. 2) You might decide that you want to begin by introducing three new terms a week for three weeks – then add three new terms every other week after that. In a 9-week period, students would be presented with 18 words to enter into their notebooks. In the next 9 weeks, you might decide to introduce fewer terms so that you can focus on Steps 4 – 6 which help students review the terms.

Strategies that should be moved to the “dust bin”: • Copying definitions from the dictionary. • Writing sentences which include the new word before studying the word’s meaning is of little value; writing sentences is only effective AFTER gaining some understanding of the word. • Telling students to “use context” to determine meaning: research shows that students have about a one in twenty chance of learning a word’s meaning through context. • Memorizing a list of definitions is ineffective for new learning; once students understand a new word, review is very helpful. **

**The evaluation study was comprised of experimental and control groups that included 118 teachers and 2,683 students from 11 schools in 5 U.S. districts and covered a broad range of demographic and socioeconomic factors. Pre-tests were conducted in October 2004; post-tests were conducted in April 2005.
 * __New Research on Vocabulary and Learning __**

Key Findings: In written and multiple choice assessments, the students who participated in the Building Academic Vocabulary program showed greater mean scores on the comprehension of new reading material that were statistically significant across the general literacy, mathematics, and science subject areas. The expected passing rates for the Building Academic Vocabulary participants exceeded the control groups across all measures by percentages ranging from 8.4 to 14.8 percent. For students on free and reduced lunch, the expected passing rates for the Building Academic Vocabulary participants exceeded the control groups across all measures by an average of 8.9 percent. For ELLs, the expected passing rates for the Building Academic Vocabulary participants exceeded the control groups across all measures by an average of 16.5 percent. The findings compared favorably to federally-funded Comprehensive School Reform programs.

View the full report and visit ASCD's Building Academic Vocabulary education topic for more information and resources about the program by clicking on the link below:** 
 * [|ASCD's Builidng Academic Vocabulary Research]**

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