TITLE: Vocabulary Connections Learning Strategies
File: B:JHS1920. Compiled by Mr. J. Smith
Source: Journal of Reading (29:7, April 1986), p. 643
Date: 8/24/94
I. Five steps for vocabulary learning strategy development
1 Activate whatever the students already know. Ask: "What do I know about these words?" This should be the student's first strategic step.
2 Ask: "What do I see in previewing the selection that can give me a clue as to what these words might mean? What's my best guess?"
Have students make preliminary, predictive connections between words or between words and the topic and structure of the selection. This emphasizes that words are not isolated elements but parts of rich semantic networks.
Both the process of attaching meaning to a word and the meaning itself are important, so students must be active in generating tentative meanings to be tested in reading. These hypothesized meanings should lead to predictions about the content or the structure of the selection to be read. Vocabulary learning should be text based.
3 Read the text so that words can be encountered in their natural environment.
4 Refine and reformulate meaning after reading using initial cues and the cues from the reading selection. This strategic step has the student say: "I can use what I read to confirm or clarify my preliminary ideas about what these words mean."
5 Use the word in writing and additional reading. Students should develop the strategic notion: "To make a word mine, I must read it and use it."
II. Techniques for activating what students already know
1. Brainstorming
But if the material is to unfamiliar, this may turn out to be a "brain drizzle." As an alternative, try "Exclusion Brainstorming."
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TITLE: Vocabulary Connections Learning Strategies
File: B:JHS1920
Source: Journal of Reading (29:7, April 1986), p. 643
Date: 8/24/94
2. Exclusion Brainstorming
Place the title or topic of the selection on the board, along with a few well chosen words, some of which fit the topic, some of which obviously don't, and others which are ambiguous. Start by asking students to exclude those words that they think would not be found in such a selection, and to indicate those that are more likely to appear. It is essential to have students explain why they think the way they do.
Example: "Family Life in an African bush station"
avalanche, tricycle, thicket, veldt, dolphin, pampas.
3. Knowledge Rating
Before reading, present readers with a list of vocabulary. Have students analyze what they know about each word individually. Follow up with a discussion using questions such as "Which are the hardest words? Which do you think most of us don't know? Which are the easiest ones? Which will most of us know?"
Example: Knowledge Rating. How much do you know about these words? Indicate "Can Define," "Have seen/heard” or "Unknown."
geodesic dome, yurt, mandan, tepee, nuraghe, leanto.
III. Techniques for making preliminary connections
1. Organize vocabulary in relationship to a larger whole through classification. Ask, "From the words you know, what is this set of words (or what is this chapter/story) about?" Only two words need to be known to hypothesize a classification, in the above instance, dwelling places.
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TITLE: Vocabulary Connections Learning Strategies
File: B:JHS1920
Source: Journal of Reading (29:7, April 1986), p. 643
Date: 8/24/94
2. "Connect Two"
This strategy is particularly useful to ease students into the more complicated multiple classifications to follow. This process focuses on one connection at a time.
Students pick any two words from the prereading activation session and tell how they would relate them. Students might connect "antelope + thicket," because antelopes might hide in or graze in a thicket. The next student could connect another two words, or connect a third word to the first set, as "bush" since "bush" might be terrain made up of clumps of thickets.
The resulting chart can show all the hypothesized links, thus becoming a semantic map.
"Connect Two" is a simple form of limited classification, and it is through the explanation of why or how the words might be related that the predictions are made.
3. Semantic Feature Analysis
Several words are categorized along several different dimensions.
Example: Analyze these vehicles: Saab, Volvo, Buick, Toyota by indicating no (), yes (+), or not sure (?) for the categories: American made, 6 cylinder, less than $10,000.
4. Semantic Gradient
Several words are related on a continuum.
Example: Arrange these words from the coldest to the hottest: cool, hot, lukewarm, boiling, freezing, supercooled, tepid.
5. Concept Ladder
The concept ladder permits a focus on a single word that represents the main concept of a selection, rather than on a set of words. Students can create a "Concept Ladder" that shows how the word is related hierarchically to other words and concepts they already know. In the process the student calls up other vocabulary already known,
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TITLE: Vocabulary Connections Learning Strategies
File: B:JHS1920
Source: Journal of Reading (29:7, April 1986), p. 643
Date: 8/24/94
creating a rich semantic network for the new term. Creating a Concept Ladder helps students focus what they know about and also indicates what areas they don't know about, helping them to set purposes for expanding their knowledge through reading.
Example: GUITAR
Kind of? instrument
Part of? a band
Made of? wood, metal, plastic
Kinds of? folk, classical, electric
Parts of? Strings??
Made (used) for: making music
6. Predictogram
The Predictogram is another way to focus prereading predictions from vocabulary. It is a charting process which asks students to organize vocabulary in relationship to the structure of the selection. It may be used in conjunction with a "story grammar" for narrative text. Consider the vocabulary from a typical narrative selection, "The Greyling," by Jane Yolen:
fisherman, shallows, stranded, wail, grief, selchie, baby, sandbar, roiling seas, townsfolk, sloughoff.
For the prereading activation, students may be asked to: (1) make associations, using the "Connect Two" procedure; (2) complete a "Knowledge Rating" of these words.
For the prediction phase, ask students to classify the vocabulary according to how they would predict that the author might use it in the selection they are about to read to (1) tell about the setting, (2) the characters, (3) the problem or goal, (4) actions, (5) resolution, (6) feelings of the character.
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TITLE: Vocabulary Connections Learning Strategies
File: B:JHS1920
Source: Journal of Reading (29:7, April 1986), p. 643
Date: 8/24/94
Example: Predict how the author will use these words in the story to tell about:
The setting: rolling seas, townsfolk
The actions: stranded
The characters: fisherman, townsfolk
The goal or problem: roiling seas, stranded
The resolution: wail, grief
Other things: selchie
IV. Reformulation/revision
After reading, have students confirm or modify their initial written predictions, classifications, and ratings.
Students might work in pencil, and make revisions, or use different color of pencil or ink. [Might be better to use two pages, the original, and a revised version on facing pages in a notebook.] This procedure is especially helpful to the students who never seem aware that they learn from reading. "Before" and "after" charting helps them update their knowledge base and emphasizes that knowledge grows through reading.
To be truly productive, the reformulation stage should be accompanied by discussion and verification, much like predictive reading techniques.
V. Use in more reading and writing
In the prediction/proof stages, students are reading and using the vocabulary to verify their predictions, to change them, to prove a point or to resolve a disagreement. A final step should be to use the new vocabulary in writing.
Some writing assignments clearly spin off the initial prediction tasks. In the Predictogram, summarization of narratives might be a goal. Students have classified words according to the author's use and compared their predictions with the author's choice. A natural writing assignment might be to summarize the selection using as many words as possible in the appropriate category. For novice summarizers, the task may be divided, different groups doing setting, problem, etc.
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