Cognitive Theory And Teaching Vocabulary Enhancement For Various Types Of Learners

Reading can provide many benefits to the reader. One of those benefits is the expansion of the reader’s vocabulary. The more a reader reads, the broader the reader’s vocabulary.

The importance of decreasing this test score gap is essential because the No Child Left Behind legislation mandates that all students make annual progress toward reaching mastery in the core subjects of reading, math, science and social studies. Additionally in Texas, schools are rated based partially on the annual progress of subpopulations on campus. In the absence of a socio-economic disparity, more study needs to be done on ways that African-American students can become more successful at increasingly elevating their level of performance on state mandated tests. Explicit instruction is an important part of vocabulary acquisition. According to Harmon (1998) directly teaching vocabulary can assist with reading comprehension when students are taught to integrate new words with their

Throughout the eighth grade year, my reading comprehension and analysis skills have dramatically strengthened. First, my reading comprehension abilities have strengthened over the year because of the strong vocabulary that filled the books I read. The books that used advanced terminology were Lord of the Flies, Fahrenheit 451 and Twelfth Night. Whenever I read a word I didn’t understand in these novels, I always searched for the definition. By using this effective reading strategy, I was able to strengthen my vocabulary while receiving a complete comprehension of the novel being analyzed. Lord of the Flies, Fahrenheit 451 and Twelfth Night were both challenging novels to read because of their sophisticated vocabulary. However, these challenging

“A Read Aloud Curriculum integrates intentional direct comprehension and explicit vocabulary instruction into read alouds while maintaining the integrity of an authentic read aloud experience that would be highly engaging for students (Fien, et al., 2011).” The Read Aloud program is structures as to “(a) set a purpose for reading, (b) building vocabulary knowledge, (c) making text-to-text and text-to-life connections, and (d) having students retell stories or information on a regular basis (Fien, et al., 2011).” The problem is that Read Alouds by themselves do not help close the gap between children who enter school with strong vocabularies and children who enter school with weak vocabularies, accordingly the gap between students with strong and weak vocabularies only grows as the children progress through school. Another setback for students with weak vocabularies is that there is a direct link between word knowledge and comprehension, consequently the children with weak vocabularies will struggle with comprehension. Small-group instruction shows promise in improving student’s vocabularies thus improving their comprehension. By spending more time with the text and receiving instruction in a group of 2-5 students, those with weak vocabularies have shown improvement in their word knowledge and

In chapter eight of their book, Content Area Reading: Literacy and Learning Across the Curriculum, Vacca et al. (2014, pp. 238-279) discuss “developing vocabulary and concepts” in the class room. The authors present numerous strategies throughout this chapter and real world examples of them in action in a classroom. This chapter contains a plethora of information that is invaluable to the classroom teacher who is preparing students to understand the challenging vocabulary words they will be reading over or tested on. While reading this chapter, I came across many concepts and terms that were familiar to me and a few that were new or surprising.

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness of the Comprehensive Instructional Sequence when decoding complex text on students’ reading comprehension. Two groups of students were selected: one group used Comprehensive Instructional Sequence to decode and scaffold text; the other group used the previous classroom methods in which there was no continuity. Students were measured using State of Florida progress monitoring tests in which reading comprehension and Lexile were measured. Students in the experimental group were taught using the Comprehensive Instructional Sequence for four weeks. Analysis has yet to be determined. Therefore, the findings are unable to be reported. The abstract will be updated when the study period

Kaylene Beer pointed out several significant areas of reading comprehension that help students increase their fluency. Inferences is a skill that helps students with their understanding of written text. Content area teachers must model and give large amounts of practice for developing this skill. Bear also discussed in chapter eleven word recognition which has a direct connection with fluency and reading comprehension. As she pointed out students need a repertoire of skills beyond sounding it out to help struggling readers with recognizing unfamiliar words (Beer,2003). We need to teach students strategies that can be used to comprehend the text not just give the meaning of

The first skill that students need in order to be successful with reading and comprehending content area texts is background knowledge. “Background knowledge enables readers to choose between multiple meanings of words” (Neuman, Kaefer, & Pinkham, 2014, p 146). Comprehension of a content area text is not dependent upon background knowledge, but it does make it a little easier if the student already has an understanding of terms dealing with the subject. Teachers can build students’ background knowledge by teaching categories of words, analogies,

Combining activities for example, reciprocal teaching and retellings can help diverse students remember important details in a story. Other studies have emphasized reading improvement through contextual instruction, reciprocal interacts, ReQuest, ReQar, interactive and dynamic assessment, characteristics of competent readers and co-listing reading classes (Brozo, 1990; Coley & Hoffman, 1990: Davis, 1990; Peresich, Meadows, & Sinatra, 1990). Other techniques discussed in this article to overcome challenges are vocabulary instruction (using small words and the definition), word recognition instruction (sight words which can help build sentences), Key word/word bank (word of the day accompanied by drawings of what the word means, using the word in a sentence), reading programs (Basal Reading Programs), and Choral

Vocabulary instruction: Shared Reading to Build Vocabulary and Comprehension by Ted Kesler, Numerous Scholars value shared reading for children’s vocabulary, and link vocabulary knowledge and overall comprehension (Coyne, Simmons, Kame’enui, & Stoolmiller, 2004; Fisher, Frey&Lapp, 2008, McKewon & Beck, 2006). Having children explain, elaborate, and connect ideas, produce language. Shared reading format, Blachowicz and fisher (2010) stated, good instruction emphasizes that talking, thinking, and planning before reading enhance comprehension as they aid readers in developing strategic approaches.

Student oral and reading vocabulary increases in this stage. Students are reading less predictable text that require decoding skills and an expanding sight word vocabulary. Applying read a-louds, re-telling, and concept sorts are ways to expand on a student

These core components include phonemic awareness, phonics and word study, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension (National Reading Panel, 2000). Vocabulary knowledge is important because it encompasses all the words we must know to access our background knowledge, express our ideas and communicate effectively, and learn about new concepts. “Vocabulary is the glue that holds stories, ideas and content together… making comprehension accessible for children.” One of the oldest findings in educational research is the strong relationship between vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension. Word knowledge is crucial to reading comprehension and determines how well students will be able to comprehend the texts they read in middle and high school. Comprehension is far more than recognizing words and remembering their meanings. Children with reading problems read less and vocabulary knowledge often suffers. Without reading, the more challenging text, they cannot learn the vocabulary they need to be able to read further challenging

When a student encounters a difficulty with reading in the vocabulary subject there is a simple process to follow in order to introduce some of the vocabulary needed.

Another key to developing comprehension of information reports is extending student vocabulary. Groups 2 and 3 had poor vocabulary, while groups 1 and 4 had fair. Vocabulary is linked to fluency; students need to recognise high frequency words to read fluently (Hill, 2015). In addition, they need to develop vocabulary around topics for comprehension (Hill, 2015). In the data, it is apparent that all students scored higher on narrative texts for comprehension, fluency, vocabulary and retell. This indicates that students need to develop vocabulary in specific fields, such as how human actions affect the environment found in the Humanities and Social Sciences curriculum (ACARA, n.d.). Therefore, improving student vocabulary is consistent with improving fluency and informational text comprehension.

Cognitive theories of learning focus on a person’s intellect. It pertains to how individuals process and maintain information that is vital in the course of learning. For instance, schema refers to an internal structure for arranging information. When new information is received it is compared with existing cognitive organizations known as schema. Schema can be altered, combined or extended in order to support new information (O’Donnell, Reeve & Smith, 2012, p. 58). Essentially, schemas are elements of understanding that can be categorized by level of importance as well as interconnected into complex connections with one another.