Building Background Knowledge and Vocabulary in Kindergarten and 1 st Grade

Building Background Knowledge and

Vocabularyin Kindergarten and 1st

Grade Presented byAni Kumjian

According to research, teachers must make vocabulary instruction robust, vigorous, strong and powerful to be effective.

What makes vocabulary instruction robust?

A robust approach to vocabulary instruction involves directly explaining the meanings of words along with thought-provoking, playful and interactive follow-up.

Create a word conscious classroom! Motivate through your own

enthusiasm. Recognize juicy words and vivid

language. Select high quality literature for read

alouds that you enjoy!

PROCESS FOR TEACHING NEW TERMS AND PHRASES

Six Step process(Building Academic Vocabulary,

Teacher’s Manual, Marzano and Pickering, 2005)

Step 1:

Present students with a brief explanation of the new term or phrase.

Step 2:

Present students with a nonlinguistic representation of the new term or phrase.

Step 3:

Ask students to generate their own explanations or descriptions.

Step 4:

Ask students to create their own nonlinguistic representation.

Graphic organizersPictures

Step 5:

Periodically ask students to review the accuracy of their explanation and representation.

Step 6:

Involve students periodically in games that allow them to play with terms.

WHICH WORDS SHOULD BE TAUGHT?

THREE TIERS OF VOCABULARY WORDS

Tier One WordsFirst Tier Words rarely require instructional

attention. (Beck, 2001)

Examples are: baby, clock, happy, walk, jump, hop, slide, girl, boy, dog, yellow, play, like…

They consist of basic words.

Tier Three WordsTier Three words are words whose frequency

of use is quite low and often limited to specific domains.

These words are best learned when a specific need arises such as a geography lesson.

Examples are: Isotope, lathe, peninsula, refinery

Tier Two WordsTier Two words are those that are found

across a variety of domains, and often are a more sophisticated way of presenting ideas. These are the best for direct teaching.

Examples are: coincidence, absurd, regret, fortunate, rambunctious, magnificent, reluctant, venture, prepared, mention…

Rich knowledge of words in this tier can have a powerful impact on verbal functioning (Beck,2001).

Tier Two Words for K-1 Use words from trade books that the teacher

reads aloud to students instead of books children read on their own (Beck, 2001).

The teacher can briefly explain the meaning of the word while she is reading then follow the 6 Step process afterward . The context of the story will also aid in understanding the unknown word.

What Makes a Word Inappropriate for Instruction?

A word that cannot be explained in known terms for the students..

A word that cannot be used by students in their everyday lives. K-3 students have little opportunity to use the word “portage”.

ACTIVITIES FOR STUDENTS

Motor Imaging Draws on physical-sensory, as well as

cognitive and affective domains of learning.

Particularly effective with English Language Learners.

Word Associations: Associating a known word with a newly learned word reinforces the meaning of the word.

Word Associations are not just synonyms, students must develop a relationship between the new word and unknown word for learning to occur.

Example: “Accomplice” and the known word “crook” can be tied together by a student stating, “An accomplice helps a crook.”

Have You Ever…?

Students are asked to “Describe a time when they might (urge, banter, commend) someone.”

Applause, Applause!

Students are asked to “clap” to indicate how much they would like to be described by the target word. (Example: vain, stern, impish)

Idea Completions

Provide students with “sentence stems” that require them to integrate a word’s meaning into a context to explain the word.

Example: I knew he was a “novice” at skiing because……

Other Ideas…

The Mitten by Jan Brett

Your Turn…