Vocabulary Instruction in Upper Grade Literacy 1

Vocabulary Instruction in Upper Grade Literacy

Karen Currie

California State University, Monterey Bay

September 11, 2017

IST522 Instructional Design

Dr. Jeanne Farrington

Vocabulary Instruction in Upper Grade Literacy 2

Vocabulary Basics

Elementary school teachers at Lakewood Tech EQ serve approximately 465 students a

year, forty percent of these students are second language learners. This group is our second

largest cohort, the biggest being socio economically disadvantaged at sixty four percent. As you

can imagine, many of our students fall into both groups, creating a significant number of children

that need urgent support. In my fifteen years at my site, the first eleven as a primary teacher, I

myself always struggled to find the most efficient way to meet their needs. The past four years

as an instructional coach, my eyes have been opened to a more global view, and my sense of

urgency has only increased. When working on coaching cycles with our upper grade staff I see

and hear their dedication to continuous professional development with each new focus that we

add on to their plate. Last year I was asked, When will our plates be too full to add any more?

This driving question led me to really question why we indeed needed to add more. What if we

analyzed what we already had there to see if it was working? Lets take off what isnt crucial and

work to perfect our craft on the areas that can effect the most change.

I had my opinion of what our most needed area for improvement was, but to ensure I was

on the right path, I created a set of nine interview questions (Figure 1) to record the thoughts of

my colleagues. I conducted the interviews of five upper grade teachers, with varying years of

teaching experience, ages, gender, and areas of strength. I did one additional interview of our

principal to see how closely her responses matched those of our teaching staff. The one on one

interviews took place over a three day span in their classrooms to try to put them at ease. The

ten questions started very open ended, then moved to a more direct approach to see if my

instincts were correct. I also had one question that used the Likert scale, I asked them to share
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their level of understanding on several vocabulary strategies that I have seen successfully

implanted at other sites.

Stahls work highlighted what teachers have known for years, that there is a strong

connection between high levels of vocabulary and deep reading comprehension (F & P 2009).

The teachers I interviewed all had a very positive feeling about their language arts instruction.

They were all able to correctly identify their unique strengths and for the most part, pin point

their areas of need. Most of them mentioned the need for improved vocabulary development.

The teachers recognized the need for improvement, and many shared a lack of understanding of

how to successfully build student vocabulary banks.

When looking at their areas of strength, I found it interesting and encouraging that three

out of five teachers specifically identified two components that were new last year with support

embedded while we rolled it out. Our teachers are very motivated by student growth and look at

data frequently in data teams, and in the professional learning communities every six weeks.

Their positive experiences with training last year could be built upon this year to further their

professional development and grow student success.

When I narrowed the direction of my questions to look more closely at vocabulary

acquisition, one piece not recorded in my interview was their facial reactions to the question.

Every teacher looked immediately uncomfortable, some pursed lips, looked up as if searching for

answers, or took a deep breath. All but one surveyed members spoke of a strategy or structure

that they incorporate in their language arts block to address the need all of our students have to

expand their vocabulary. Structures mentioned stem from past trainings using technology in the

classroom, some from a book study on the CAF Model, and one shared to that he had reverted

to having the students use a dictionary, glossary, or Google. When I look at the poor data on
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vocabulary understanding from our benchmark assessments and pair it with a real lack of

knowledge on our staff, I see a need for improvement.

My recommendation to fill the gap we are having in vocabulary structures is training. I

recommend this for many reasons.

First of all, the five upper grade teachers that were interviewed for the needs assessment

had a very limited knowledge of the topic. They did have some scattered prior knowledge and

are ineffectively using structures right now. This acknowledges they value the instructional

minutes that are dedicated to it as part of their program.

Additionally, our staff regularly participates in trainings and this has been a very

successful model. We have a real community of learners that are eager to improve their skills,

and are highly motivated by student growth. Our school wide goal is to reclassify all of our

English Language Learners by they time they complete fifth grade and move on to the middle

school.

Equally important, we have the resources readily available. We have curriculum and

supplies that I will be recommending in my training. I am already paid in my position to offer

training and feel that these sessions will greatly impact students in their performance on our

district benchmark assessments, CELDT or ELPAC test for our English Language Learners, and

the CAASP test at the end of the year. (short term impact) On a larger scale, our students would

have the necessary skills to keep on their path towards higher education and improved life skills.

I believe the cause for the gap is a combination of three factors. We have a large number

of second language learners. While these students are incredibly hard working, with a hunger for

learning, we need to have structures in place to feed their desires. At least fifty percent of our
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families come from homes that the highest level of parent education is high school. The parents

often dont have the knowledge of how to help their kids at home. Especially after the

introduction of common core strategies and techniques that look very different from how they

learned in school. Finally, to survive in the more and more expensive bay area, many of them

work two jobs leaving little to no time to work with their kids at home. None of these are

factors under our control. Where we can make an impact is how we use our precious minutes

while we are with our students.

To summarize, data and staff interviews both indicate that not only is vocabulary

instruction an immediate need, it is also something that teachers are motivated to work on. Due

to the high costs of using substitute teachers to allow for teachers to be released for training, I

feel very confident in using a virtual classroom as our alternative. Giving flexibility, having

videos at their fingertips, and allowing one structure at a time are all additional advantages of

using the virtual classroom over a release day for face to face training. These short modules will

be appropriately portioned and intentionally sequenced to increase the likelihood of it going into

the learners long term memory (Stolovitch & Keeps, 2011). As teachers begin to go through the

training modules, informal and formal observations can be done to see their progress in

classrooms. I will also provide the teachers with the option of doing a formal coaching cycle to

give more support for those that request it. I feel confident that this training approach will

remedy the instructional ineffectiveness we see today, which will lead to improved readers

graduating from our school.

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References

Stolovitch, Harold D. & Keeps, Erica J. (2011), Telling Aint Training, 2 Edition. Alexandria, VA:
nd

American Society for Training & Development

Reiser, R. A. & Dempsey, J.V. (Eds.) (2012), Trends and Issues in Instructional Design and
Technology. Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc.

Pinnell, Gay Su & Fountas, Irene C. (2009), When Readers Struggle Teaching That Works:
Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann
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Vocabulary Acquisition Interviews

Teacher Information:
Male / Female Years experience: _______ Years at the grade level:
________

1. How successful do you feel with your language arts program?

2. What do you feel are the strongest parts?
3. What area do you feel you need support in?
4. How do you incorporate vocabulary acquisition into your ELA block?
5. What structures do you currently use?
6. How do you select the focus words?
7. Are there specific things you want to learn more about to improve your practice?
8. Have you ever heard of any of these strategies? 1-5 Knowledge about them, one
being nothing to 5 I know it well and could use it in my classroom.
Frayer Model
Graffiti Vocabulary
Making Meaning
Word Wall Match Up
Vocabulary Anchor
Essential Prefix
Wordsplash
Interview a word
Word Sorting
Kahoot!
KIM Strategy
Vocabulary Squares
Learning Maps
9. Is there anything you are surprised I didnt ask you about?