Building Vocabulary - Take 1

Vocabulary building is huge – ask any reading specialist. They will tell you that the bigger the person’s vocabulary, the easier reading (and probably all other subjects) is and the better the person’s comprehension. If you’ve ever tried to read anything technical without having the vocabulary background, you know this is true. My daughter is playing rugby in college this year, and reading an account of one of her games is like experiencing a new language, except I can read all words – I just don’t know what they mean. And I’m fortunate this year to again be working with ELL students, who experience that disconnect on a daily basis. So I’m once again thinking a lot about how to build up all students’ vocabularies, so that everyone can be more successful in school.

There’s no doubt that most of us learn most of our new words through reading. We rarely stop to look most of them up, but instead use context clues to help us make sense of the words. If I come across something new enough times, I may look it up, but otherwise reading broadly across multiple genres will give me (and my students) exposure to many words, both words directly connected to a subject, and other, more commonly used words. So like most teachers, I try to provide lots of reading opportunities with a variety of sources.

I also try to foster word consciousness – getting students to be more aware of words, particularly ones they haven’t seen, or ones they find interesting. One way I’ve done this is just a poster where we can write these words. I ask that the students notice interesting words in their reading, write them on a post-it, and then give it to me to approve before writing their words up on the poster. I didn’t do this last year, and we got some words that were either commonly known, or were names that didn’t really help us either. I’m hoping a little more oversight on my part will raise the quality of this activity.

Another related activity is putting up a long strip of adding machine tape, and asking students to add content-related words. The caveat is that they can’t repeat any words, so they have to read what is already written down before adding their words. I’ve done this particularly with social studies units, and students are often very eager to add something new. I think it would work great with science or math units as well, and it encourages students to be aware of the technical words connected with their studies.

The last activity I’ll mention is using alphaboxes. I first saw these in Linda Hoyt’s book Reflect, Revisit, Retell , and if you Google alphaboxes, you can find templates. I use these most with nonfiction, especially in guided reading groups, but you could certainly use them for fiction as well. Students add words to the boxes (one box per alphabet letter, with space for several words) that they think are important to what they are reading about. I only tell them that they need to be able to justify why they added each word if I were to ask. 

At the end of the book or article, I may ask them to pick 5 words off the sheet and tell why they are important to the subject, or pick 10 words and use them as part of a summary. Students are then held accountable for learning the meanings, not just aimlessly writing them down.

I would love to hear what other people do to build vocabulary with their students.  Even if your students aren’t learning English as a second language, a bigger, richer vocabulary can only help them in reading and in life.

Blogging with Students

I’ve just finished setting up my class list in KidBlog, and I’m eager to get going with my classes on their class blogs. I’ve had class blogs for the last three years, and each year I get a little better about using them effectively. There are a variety of different blog sites you can use, but KidBlog is designed for teachers, I’ve had good success using that site, and best of all, it’s free!

What can you use a class blog for? I think it is a great way for kids to see how writing can be something powerful and useful in their every day lives. Last year we wrote fables, and then I had the students type them into their blogs. Each student was then asked to read at least two other fables and respond to them. We talked about writing comments, and what kinds of things really made a comment helpful. Comments like “I like this” are nice, but it’s much more powerful to write something like “I liked how you made the tiger show the mouse how he really felt”. We practiced a bit beforehand with comment writing, and it substantially improved the quality of comments. Some teachers will have students do some “paper blogging”, and I’m going to try that this year as well. We’ve been writing poems, and I’m going to have students pick one they really like, copy it out in their best handwriting, and put them around the class. We’ll discuss commenting, and then I’ll turn the students loose with at least three post its.  They will need to read at least three poems and write out three comments that specifically notice something the writer did. If they say “I like this”, they will then need to explain why.

After doing this activity, I will introduce the blogs on the computer. I think I’m going to have them type that poem or another one in as their first post, and we’ll repeat the comments activity. Later in the year, I will ask them to type in other forms of writing we do in class, in addition to letting students choose what their topics will be.

I set the privacy settings to just our class having access; nobody else can read the posts. I also choose the setting that lets me look over the posts and comments before they get published. This is a bit time-consuming on my end, but I’ve learned the hard way that if I don’t moderate it, someone is going to write something that is inappropriate, and everyone will see it before I do. I’ve also included my partner teacher (who teaches math/science) and our Talent Development teacher on the list, so they can post questions for students to respond to as well.  Students can access the KidBlog website through a link on my classroom webpage, so they can blog whenever they like, not just at school. Some kids love to write about all kinds of things, while others will just post when asked to in class.

If you haven’t considered having a class blog, it might be something you want to try this year. It gives students an authentic writing platform, and in today’s social media world, learning how to write helpful comments can’t hurt. 

Fluency

Many studies have shown that increased fluency has a direct effect on comprehension, so getting students to increase their fluency is definitely a goal of mine. Repeated reading is an easy way to increase speed, word recognition, and add expression, but as usual, the question is how to work that in to an already packed day. Many teachers (and students) like using Reader's Theater to get in that repeated practice, and I enjoy using those scripts, too, but I find it hard to work those in all the time.  My solution has been to send home the fluency practice.

Each week, on the back of their word work homework, I put a short passage for the students to read at home. I alternate between fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, and I almost always connect it to something we have been doing in class. The passages are pretty short, and I encourage families to modify the length more if their child can't manage the length of the passage due to reading difficulties.  In some cases, I might send home an easier text altogether. The students are asked to read the passage five out of the seven days that they have it, and then return it to school.  I give them up to five points, which I record to use as a homework grade.

So does it work?  Well, at the beginning of the school year, I have each student do a one minute fluency reading in a fourth grade level passage. I do a running record as they read, and get an initial words per minute rate. I try very hard not to dwell on the numbers with the kids, but I do tell them I have a goal for them to be reading at least 125 words per minute by the end of the year. Those who are already at that rate get a higher goal. Then I will listen to them read in guided reading, and discuss phrasing and expression, but won't do another timed reading until the end of each trimester.  It is then that the kids can see their improvement, as I use the same text that I used at the start of the year. I know it isn't a cold reading, but they don't remember it well, either, and I like seeing how the running record changes, as well as the reading rate. I have had students literally double the number of words read per minute over the course of the year, and I attribute much of that to their daily fluency practice.  On the other hand, the kids who don't do the practice tend to see much smaller gains in their overall fluency.

I think that parents tend to like the practice, too, as they have commented to me that there is a marked difference from the first day their child reads, to the last. And by having the fluency passages be connected to our classwork, they can ask their child how the story ends, or something about social studies or science.  I have used  part of Martin Luther King's I Have a Dream speech in January, and the Gettysburg Address in February.  I like using some of the more classic poems, like Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening, too. There may be some memorization as the week goes on, but I like being able to refer back to some of these readings, and the kids will start reciting them to me.
Weekly fluency practice is an easy thing to get ready, and the payoff for me and my students has been huge.

Word Work

If I had to go back to college again, which I wouldn’t mind doing, one area I would love to take classes in would be linguistics. I love words and studying words and their origins – it just makes my geeky self pretty happy. Luckily, I can indulge this geeky interest in the classroom through word work.  I know in the Common Core (for fourth grade, it’s standard 4.3.0.3 – and yes, I had to look it up) students are expected to use morphology, including roots and affixes, to help with determining word meanings.  But how best to do this?

Over the years, I’ve developed what I call word work.  I don’t think it is anything original, and there are certainly many activities you can do that would be considered word work, but here is what mine looks like.

Each week I introduce two prefixes or suffixes. I start with some pretty basic ones early in the year, and then move into some that may be a bit less common, or would be considered more of a word part (like auto-) rather than a prefix. The first day, I have the students get out their dictionaries and look up the prefix or suffix. This is about the only dictionary work I do during the week, but at least they are getting a little practice. I have them write the definition down in their word work section of their writing notebook. I also hand out a take-home work sheet asking them to find one word for each of the affixes that we’re doing that week, write a sentence with that word showing what it means, and then I leave a small space for a sketch of the word. They have a week to get this done.

The following days I spend about five minutes going over two examples of each word part being used in a word. For example, this week we’re going over pre- and tri-, and I will do preview and predict, triangle and tricycle on the first day of words. I have the kids write the words in their notebooks underneath the definition of the word parts. Then I draw a sketch of the word, and encourage the kids to do the same. Over the years, I’ve developed a cartoony cast of characters that I use to illustrate the words, and that seems to help draw the students in as they wait to find out what is going to happen with Fred and Susie. (It also entertains me, which is a plus!)

By the end of a five-day cycle, students will have eight words each (sixteen total) that are examples of these prefixes and suffixes. For students who don’t have a dictionary or help at home, they have a bunch of words they can choose from in their notebooks.

It takes a while, but what I’ve observed is after a few weeks of doing this, students start to notice when a word has a prefix or a suffix that we’ve studied. I give them “Quist points” for noticing (the points don’t really go towards anything, but I tell them to keep track of them and they’ll get something great at the end of the year, which luckily nobody seems to remember). Many researchers will tell you that one way to increase your vocabulary is to learn Greek and Latin roots, and as we learn more throughout the year, I will have kids predict what they think a word means, based on what we’ve learned in the past.  I’ve even experienced this myself when I’ve come across words I didn’t know, but they had an affix whose meaning I remembered. It’s possible to be remarkably accurate in predicting meaning with that information. And finally, when kids are asked about Greek or Latin roots on the MAP test, I’ve found they now know what the question is asking them about. 

I’d be happy to share my worksheet and word lists with anyone who is interested in trying this in his or her classroom. The best part is it really doesn’t take that much time, and you get a big payoff with word recognition. Happy word work!

Reading and Choice

In my fantasy classroom, all students would be busy reading books they chose for themselves. These books would be at an appropriate reading level and would be genres that the students loved, but they would also happily read books in other genres, just to challenge themselves. Since it’s a fantasy, I will have the time to conference with every student AND get all guided reading groups done. Now before you fall off your chair laughing, I’ll tell you what I usually get each year.

My students who love to read can find books with little direction, but often tend to read one or two genres, just like I do in my own reading life. I know I need to work at broadening their selection, but on the whole, they are readers. And then there are the other students. Some will find books after lots of prodding, or I can interest them in graphic novels, and that will later lead to other novels. But the ones that make me crazy are the students who are always heading to the bathroom during independent reading, or constantly browsing in the book bins, and who change books daily. I know they are mostly fake reading, and I struggle each year to find titles that will engage them.

One solution I have tried with some success is giving students some “guided” choice. I pull out about six chapter book titles, trying to pick books with a variety of levels and topics. I then give short book talks and the kids write down their top three choices on a post-it. I will usually try to give kids their first choice if at all possible, but I will also make sure they are in a book that I know they can finish. I then divide the books into three segments (total number of pages divided by three). Each week the students are asked to read one segment, do some general responses, and then we’ll chat in a group about what they’ve read so far. I think this has worked well because it gives the wandering students a focus – they know how much they need to read and when it is due. They’ve had a little choice, so I’m not forcing them to read something they had no say in. And they actually finish a book, and they feel pride in that. 

However, this year, I’m going to try something even more directed. In The Book Whisperer, Donalyn Miller requires her students to try and read 40 books during the school year, and in a variety of genres.  She lets the students know the number of books in a genre they need to read, and if they read a book over a certain number of pages, it counts for two books (so readers of long books aren’t penalized). I think some books will be picture books, so they will be shorter than chapter books, too. Even if the students don’t reach the goal of 40 books, they’ve still usually read way more than they read the year before.

This is a modification of her genre breakdown, but I think she would probably say you should make it work for you, so this is what I’m going to try:

Poetry anthologies: 2

Traditional Literature: 3

Realistic Fiction: 5

Historical Fiction: 3

Fantasy/Sci-Fi: 3

Informational: 10

Biography: 2

Graphic Novels: 2

Free Choice: 10

I need to make up a list so students can record their books, and I’m anxious to get this going and see if it makes a difference in my students’ reading lives. How do you manage reading choice in your classroom?