some of the textual situations that occur in naturally occurring contexts that can make it difficult or not so difficult to derive meaning. Several ‘examples in the chapter described young children taught using a Tier Two word and enjoying it. A key notion in the chapter is chat robust instruction is needed in order to mediate comprehending and composing. YOUR TURN = Completing te accompanying chart should provide some evidence for to notion that ‘word knowledge is indeed multifaceted. Puta check under the apotoorate category to show your knowiedge of each word. Know itwell, | Know something | Have seen | Do not ‘can explainit, about it, can relate orheard | know the Word use it ittoa situation the word | word palpable | ameliorate prewmonia heredity 2. Choose an excerpt from 2 magazine article, nemspape, or novel. Select 10 target words an¢ categorize them as having one of tha fofowing contexts: misdirectve, ‘nondirectve, general, or directive. Make a photocopy ofthe excerpt and block out ‘he 10 target words, Ask afew adults to try to figure out what the missing words av ‘Words in what kinds of contexts wore mast dificuit for readers to figure aut? Which ‘wore easiest? Do your resuts agree with ours? ‘Sort the following words into which of the three ters each belongs: chil, fora, axguis, abo, birt, stethoscope, beak, colonial, cher, repeal. rice aemeirtine | : CHAPTER Choosing Words to Teach duced in conjunction with a reading selection in a third-grade basal: gym, recite, prefer, perform, enjoying, billions (Parr et al., 2000). Think about the difference in the utility and familiarity of the words. For example, nor only is gym most likely known by third graders, it also has a much more limited role in a literate repertoire relative to prefer and perform, ‘Why do you think these words were selected? One obvious reason for selecting words to teach is that students do not know che words, Although reste, peer, perfonn, and billions may be unfamiliar to many third graders, gym and enjoying are Wkly knowa by most third graders. Familiscity docs ‘not seem to be the principle used to make the selection. What about impor- tance or usefulness? Are the selected words useful for reading and writing? Would che words be important to know because they appear in other texts with a high degree of frequency? Some—but not all—of the words might be considered useful or important. So, the question remains: Why were the words selected? The purpose of this chapter is to consider what principles ight be used for selecting words to teach, WHICH WORDS TO TEACH? The carliest atrention to the kinds of words to be taught was Beck and McKeown’s concept of word tiers, initially introduced in’ Beck and col- leagues (1987), which became more prominent in Beck, McKeown, and Kucan’s books, Bringing Words to Life (2002) and Creating Robust Vocabulary (2008). As we just described in Chapter 1, we conceptualized a three-tier 19heuristic by considering chat different words have different utility and roles in the language (Beck et al, 1987). Recall chat we designated Tier One as. words typically found in oral language and Tier hice consists of words that tend to be limited to specific domains (e.g., enzyme) or so rare that an avid reader would likely not encounter them in a lifetime (e.g,, abecedar- ian). Tier Two comprises wide-ranging words of high utility for literate language users. These are words that are more characteristic of written lan- ‘guage (€g., emerge), and not so common in conversation (Hayes & Ahrens, 1988). In this recent period of vocabulary research, other vocabulary scholars have provided inpat on the kinds of words best targeted for instruction, The approaches can be roughly divided into those researchers who, like Beck and McKeown, describe criteria for choosing words (Nation, 2001; ‘Stabl & Nagy, 2006), and those who have developed procedures for identi~ {ying specific words (Biemille, 2001, 2005; Hiebert, 2005).. First, let us comsider those methods focused on objective procedures for identifying words, Biemiller (2005) developed a system for selecting ‘words based on testing words from several levels of the living word vocabu- lary (LWV). The LWV was developed by Dale and O'Rourke (1979) to investigate students’ actual word knowledge. The researchers did this by testing students through multiple-choice items at grades 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, and early college. In contrast, frequency counts are based on how often 4 ‘word appears in a database, such as words in printed school materials, There are several problems with LWV: it is dated, and its methodology has been, called into question (Hiebert, 2005; Nagy & Hiebert, 2011). But itis the only source available based on students’ knowledge of words. Biemiller and Slonim’s (2001) methods involved testing words from the LW'V’s fourth-grade level and found that most of the words known by 80% of fourth graders were actually already known by children at the end of second grade, Then after more testing, the researchers identified optimal candidates for instruction a5 those words that 30-70% of children knew when tested and which thus seemed likely to be learned next. Biemiller and Slonim noted that their results indicated that words were learned in a roughly sequential order and interpreted this finding as offering a develop mental view of the acquisition of vocabulary. Thus, given their view that ‘word learning was a developmental matter, they suggested that teaching ‘words in the order that they secmed to be acquired would be beneficial But the order of word learning is not developmental. Something that is developmeneal means that an individual must go through specific sequenced stages, such as the common example of walking before running, The sequence of learning the meanings of words does not reside in innate human development; that is, our brains are not wired to acquire words in pve ip aeRO eona err ceeaennemnUiaiaS any given sequence. The order of learning words resides in children’s envi- ronments and experiences: what chey hear, see, are told, read, and the like Beyond the fict that chere is no innate sequence, adhering co any sequence for learning words is not necessary because words axe not selated in a hierarchical way; that is, many words that support general language and literacy do not comprise an organized system in which certain words pre~ cede others conceptually. For example, if child understands the concept of stubborn, he or she could learn obstinate before headstrong or defiant before obstinate and the like. (We note that a number of words in the content areas do have hierarchical relations, which as we already asserted should be dealt with in the couse of dealing with che content in which they appear.) Hicbert’s (2005) approach for selecting words for instruction was based ‘on frequency counts. So, asa reminder, et us talk briefly about whar word frequencies are. Usually when people talk about word frequency, they are referring to a listing of words by their frequency of appearance in writ- ten language. The standard example for a long time was Carroll, Davies, and Richman’s Ward Frequency Book. Published in 1971, it was produced by examining a large collection of texts used in school through grade 12. (Other similar resources exist, such as the more recent Educator's Word Fre- quency Guide (Zeno, Ivens, Millard, & Davvuri, 1995). These resources lst all the words from the texts they include in their corpus by the number of times they appear (cheir frequency) as well as at what grade levels. ‘We acknowledge that frequencies can provicle some information, but some problems are inevitable when word frequency is the primary source for identifying words. For example, the words work, works, worked, and work- ing ate all separate entries, yet the meaning of those words is virtually the same. In contrast, a word chat has different meanings is listed only once For example, whether honk means financial institution, edge ofa river, or angle of an airplane is not taken into account, B-a-n-l appears one time on the list, and irs associated frequency represents all the different meanings. In ‘other words, there is no way to get the frequency of the word bank meaning 2 financial institution. Moreover, the boundary between high and low fte~ quency is an arbitrary one so that the low-frequency category includes both ‘words that almost got into the high-frequency category as well as words that are tealy rare (Nation, 2001), Hicbert’s (2005) goa! was co identify words that are unknown to stu~ dents in first through fourth grades, but that also appear in a significant portion of texts in grades five and above so that those words could be the targets of instruction. The goal to do that is certainly adinirable. Hiebert selected the words in the texts used in the fourth-grade versions of three prominent standards-based tests and the National Assessment of Educa~ tional Progress on which to establish frequeney counts. Specifically, shecategorized the words from her frequency data according to zones that cortespond to bands of frequency. Zones { through 4 contain 5,586 words that Hiebert has designated for teaching in grades one through four. With instruction divected to Zones I through 4, students would have been taught about 92% of the words on the prominent tess. An example of a difference between tiers and frequencies illusteates another problem of relying on frequencies. Most would agree that breaking is simply a form of break—a word that even toddlers are likely familiar with, sand thus we would put it in Tier One. Complicated, on the other hand, is a rather sophisticated word, less common to children’s oral language, and needs some explanation fo communicate, Yer it sa useial word as itis likely {© appear in many domains and circumstances—from describing television plots to theories of the galaxy! All this makes it a prototypical Tier Two ‘word, Yer according to Carroll and colleagues’ Wond Frequency Book (1971), bale and complicated have the same frequency count. As the above example suggests, we would not recommend relying on frequency lists as the peimaty resource for selecting words to teach, although frequency can be one useful resource. Frequency lists can seem very tempt= ing, because they are objective—gathered from actual data on use of words in the language. Bue this very fact is also why they should not be relied on. Frequency merely indicates how often a word appears in print compared to ‘other words in the language. That fact does not exactly translate into how difficule a word is or even how useful i is to a user's repertoire Other scholars have taken an approach more similar to Beck and McKe- own's, categorizing words as to their role and utility in the language and laying ont guidelines for selecting words to teach. Stalil and Nagy (2006) approach the issue of which words and what kind of attention to devote (0 different words by using characteristics such as frequency, utility, and requirements for learning to cteate descriptive categories of word types. ‘Two key categories that Seahl and Nagy assert merit significant attention are “high-frequency words” and “high-utiity general vocabulary.” Stahl and Nagy characterize high-frequency words as those that make up the bulk of words in any genre, spoken or written. This category is similar eo our Tier One words, Stall and Nagy suggest that many if not most stadents will be familiar with these words early in their school carcers. However, given the importance of these words, Stahl and Nagy suggest providing many opportunities for students to deal with these words in context. Stahl and Nagy’s (2006) high-utility general vocabulary words, similar to our Tier Two words, are described as those that “may be uncommon in conversation but are part of the core of written language that students encounter in their texts words you'd expect to be part of literave per- son's vocabulary” (p. 61). They offer examples forthe first nine letters of the pci i ea alphabet: abolish, banish, chamber, deliberate, exceed, ieguent, genuine, hospitable, initiative. Nation (2001) provides similar considerations about which words meric, instruction, and, although his discussion is targeted to learning English as 2 second language, the constructs he presents are relevant for first-language learning as well. Nation identifies four kinds of vocabulary to consider when designing instruction: high frequency, academic, technical, and low Frequency and points our that almost 80% of che running words in any eext are high frequency. It is easy to see why high-frequency words constitute such 2 high percentage of running words in any text by considering che table below in which we lise every 10th word of the highest 300 words in the language. It is also easy to see why these are not the words that differ entiate students with high and low vocabulary knowledge or good and poor comprehenders (Cunningham & Stanovich, 1998; Hayes & Ahrens, 1988), 10. the 110. cur 210. lard 20. of 120, tne 220. four 30, ana 130. Feemse 280. eed 40, your 140, things 240. fer 30, wp 150, umber 250. sioner 60. other 160, name 260. sentence 70. could 170. under 270, we 80. my 180. next 280. ear 90, water 190, lobe? 290. want 100, keno 0. wren 300, ed Such words would reside in oar Tier One eategory, which includes words that are likely learned from everyday experiences. Nation’s (2001) category of academic words are those common across domains of academic texts, which typically make up about 10% of running words in adult texts. Here Nation cites Coxhead’s New Academic Word List (2000) as a good database. Coxhead'’s list of 570 word families was drawn from a corpus of 3.5 million running words from academic journals and university textbooks in four broad academic areas: arts, commerce, law, and natural science. Both frequency and dispersion—the extent that words appear in several domains—were considered in selecting the words, such that all word families on the list occurred in all four academic areas and were used at least 100 times across the texts being analyzed. Nation views academic words as essential to teach because of their range of coverage over various types of text and the meaning they bring to a text. These words ‘would overlap our Tier Two category.