“Effective vocabulary instruction is multidimensional and intentional” (Sweeny & Mason, 2011). It is important for teachers to find helpful strategies when teaching new science vocabulary to their students. Technology today has opened a whole new world of strategies for teaching science vocabulary such as, word games, scavenger hunts, graphic organizers, etc. instead of the old way of just having students write the words in a notebook and find the definitions in a dictionary or glossary. In order to keep students engaged in learning teachers need to make sure that their instruction is interactive and fun. To help with learning academic vocabulary teachers need to incorporate the following; helpful strategies and activities, provide students with instruction and development, and ways to differentiate in order to meet the needs of ELLs and students with learning disabilities. In learning about science it is the teachers job to teach …show more content…
Teachers need to organize the vocabulary words into three categories, such as, “Tier I words include words that are almost universally known (tree, leaf); Tier II words include almost all of the words we need to teach students; and Tier III words are infrequent and technical (photosynthesis) that are best learned at their point of need” (Flood & Lapp, 2016). Providing students with learning disabilities assistance (one-on-one) and modifying their assignments will help them to feel more comfortable in the learning of the vocabulary content. A teacher’s aid can be useful in a classroom when it has students with disabilities. Using scaffolding and graphic organizers are other ways to help students with the concepts of learning science vocabulary words. For example, Venn Diagrams, Semantic Map (Concept/Key Word), Compare/Contrast, Cause and Effect Diagrams, and so many
I gathered student written inventories and held personal interviews and conversations with students and their families in order to help my students grow and mature in their vocabulary usage. This information told me they value who they are and what motivates them so I could design innovative practices and utilize proven methods of vocabulary instruction that promote learning for all my students.
The students need further intervention in vocabulary development in the technology education content area. There are many strategies for teaching academic vocabulary each of which can provide students with opportunities to build word knowledge. After some investigation of the strategies, this researcher determined that Marzano’s Six-Step Process for Building Academic Vocabulary best suits the sixth-grade technology class. Marzano’s Six-Step Process for Building Academic Vocabulary will be used as the basis for vocabulary development intervention. Marzano's Six-Step Process promotes the use of both technology and games to increase vocabulary development.
Fossils Tell of Long Ago uses accessible language and illustrations to aid all students in vocabulary and new concept growth. Explicit instructions, reading the book allowed to the class, and allowing conversation among individual students as they work through learning new words will aid ELL students in expanding their word knowledge. Furthermore, having ELL students translate new word to into their native language will help them activate their previous knowledge. Encouraging all students to be actively engage in learning words will ensure that ELL students and all students will gain knowledge and make connections to new words.
Another example I would use, would be a picture of 'Peter Rabbit' running, which could be an illustration of the vocabulary words 'wandered' or 'scampered'. During the reading of the story 'Peter Rabbit', I will point to the vocabulary word in the pocket chart and ask my students, 'what is this word'? and we will say it together; example: 'Trembling'. I would then ask the students a comprehension question like; 'What was Peter Rabbit doing'? A students response could be; 'Peter Rabbit was trembling with fright'.
A word wall for scientific vocabulary can be created for courses like Chemistry, Physical Science, Earth Science, and Physics core classes. For example, in chemistry a word wall for physical changes, chemical change, and periodic table vocabulary can be constructed by the students. For Physics, words like speed, velocity, kinetic energy, and potential energy can be posted on the wall for a lesson on forces and motion to help facilitate the acquisition of academic terminology for ELL learners in the field of science. Also concepts that are opposite to each other like strong/weak, long/short. Hot/cold, soft/hard, ect. allows students to develop critical thinking skills required for comparing and contract analysis.
HI Joel. I chose to respond to your post because I thought it would be fun to think about a few more classroom ready vocabulary strategies that steered clear of the vocabulary notebook that would be shoved in a desk and forgotten. Here’s one that came to me after reading your post. It would be really great to make vocabulary chart, when beginning a unit, and then go baack and fill it in sort of klike you would a KWL chart. For example, if the class were starting a unit on energy, light and sound. If the whole class did a semantic map (p.65), and then went back and filled it in after the whole science unit then I bet the map would grow exponentially. That by itself could serve as an assessment right? It
1.-Review your vocabulary list. DO the words you choose still best represent key aspects of your identity, values, goals, or abilities?
In the article Supporting English additional language students in Science: Integrating content and language, McCallum and Miller (2013) discuss the issue of using mainstream textbooks and instructional methods in an English as an additional language (E.A.L) inclusive science classroom. Students enter the class at differing literacy levels requiring teachers to provide lessons of varying difficulty to meet the needs of all students. McCallum and Miller
Interactive word walls are different than traditional word walls in the classroom, which are usually used to highlight sight words the students learned. These traditional word walls are created solely by the teacher and are not changed throughout the school year. An interactive word wall is exactly as it sounds; a wall in which the students and the teacher interact to create a science word wall highlighting the important concepts of the current unit. Interactive word walls have many benefits when used in conjunction with science lessons. Three of the benefits I noticed were that they allow for a gradual release model in teaching, and aid in student comprehension, as well as student involvement in learning.
idea on how scientific information is organised (Koomen et al., 2016). It also shows students that
Although Marzano’s research showed this was an effective practice with the majority of studies reporting a positive impact on achievement their where studies that show a negative effect. “Happily, the research is also beginning to tell us what does and/or doesn’t make the strategy work.” He identified three strategies teachers used who did not have positive results and that don’t work and they seem fairly obvious but important to consider. First in the introduction phase student’s explanations should connect to his or her own lives so it would be important for the teacher to work to make the connection in the description when introducing a new term. The third steps is reported as being critical to learning and understanding which is the step that requires students to represent the word in pictures or symbols. This of course makes sense in the fact the visuals are always considered helpful in the learning process and especially for the ELL student. Marzano reports in his book a Classroom Instruction That Works” It is reported 80% of people are visual learners, pictorial examples are so important, should not be
The literature review for this study covers robust vocabulary instruction and the role of storybooks in vocabulary development. Beck, Perfetti, and McKeown (1982) acknowledged robust vocabulary instruction as an effective way for children to learn meanings of words and improve their understanding of what they are reading (as cited in Lovelace, 2009, p. 169). Using robust vocabulary instruction allows children to understand how words are similar and different from other words or ideas. Beck et al. (1982) conducted a study using fourth-grade students from low socioeconomic status to determine the outcome of using robust vocabulary instruction compared with regular reading and language arts activities (as cited in Lovelace, 2009, p 169). There have been a few studies after that compare the effects of robust vocabulary instruction on different parts of vocabulary acquisition and understanding. All of the previous studies specifically on robust vocabulary instruction found that it is beneficial gaining knowledge of vocabulary words in students of low SES.
“The limits of my language are the limits of my mind. All I know is what I have words for.”
In addition to teaching students through a variety of methods, teachers should also provide students with the tools necessary for them to be autonomous learners. According to Celce-Murcia’s Teaching English as a Second or Foreign Language, “one of the greatest challenges” facing both educators and learners is building ELL’s academic vocabularies (Celce-Murcia et al., 2013, p. 164). According to Larson (2013), active engagement encourages students to know definitions of words, “make connections between and among words and concepts,” and acquire strategies to become autonomous (Larson, 2013, p. 17). In order to do so, word walls are one type of strategy Larson proposed. Word walls allow students a visual aid. Students can place words according to three tiers: basic, general academic words, and content-specific words. For example, ‘dirt’ is a basic word, ‘soil’ is a general academic word, and ‘sediment’ is a content-specific word. Words could also be organized alphabetically, by theme, or by unit. Another strategy Larson encourages is matching activities (Larson et al, 2013). This allows students to focus on the morphology of words. For example, if students are given a word and have to locate their peers with the same Latin root or prefix, they learn how to determine meanings based on parts of a word. If one student had the word, ‘unknown,’ and another student had the word, ‘unlucky,’ they would be morphological partners because both words contain the prefix, ‘un.’
The focus of this paper is meeting the needs of resource reading readers with the use of memorization method. Students often demonstrate difficulty in the areas of reading with vocabulary and comprehension. This research paper will focus on vocabulary in the area of science. Students with reading disabilities struggle with vocabulary in the content areas, so it’s