New Science Vocabulary Analysis

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.

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.

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'.

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.

1.-Review your vocabulary list. DO the words you choose still best represent key aspects of your identity, values, goals, or abilities?

their meaning. The students will repeat the vocabulary words every time the teacher says the

Instructional strategies to assist tier 3 words are concept of definition and semantic feature analysis. Concept of definition is when the teacher makes connections to new words to known words. A word map is helpful in this process. The target word must be a part of a category, a specific content-area. Semantic feature analysis is similar to concept of definition, however in semantic analysis you are using a chart that lists members of the same category together. For example, if the topic were insect’s students would call out insect names to put in the chart, what they might have, for example; legs and

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

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

Graphic organizers are frequently used aids to aid in the comprehension of informational text for both regular and special education students in elementary, intermediate and secondary grade levels. They are simply defined as a visual representation of information in the text. According to Ausubel’s work, they enhance students’ learning and retention of unfamiliar but meaningful materials (Manoli & Papadopulou, 2012). The use of graphic organizers enables teachers to facilitate the readers’ understanding of the text through visual depictions of key terms and concepts and the relationships among them (Kim, Vaughn, Wanzek, & Shangjin, 2004). Because students with learning disabilities often have difficulty with everyday reading and organizational skills such as connecting new materials to prior knowledge, drawing inferences, and identifying and ignoring unnecessary information, it becomes especially challenging when these students are faced with challenging expository text with which to interpret and comprehend (Dexter & Hughes, 2011). With the current emphasis in education on higher order thinking, educators must provide students with effective strategies to expand their skills (Sundeen, 2007). Therefore , in order to facilitate the highest level of learning possible, the learning strategy of using graphic organizers can be beneficial (Kim et al., 2004).

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 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.’