1. The Need for a Program to Build Academic Vocabulary
Building Background Knowledge for Academic Achievement Robert J. Marzano
The Need for a Program to
Build Academic Vocabulary
In the Twenty First Century, English is the most widely spoken and written language on Earth. The number of words in English has grown from 50,000 to 60,000 words in Old English to about a million today. Today, more than 750 million people use the English language. An average educated person knows about 20,000 words and uses about 2,000 words in a week. Despite its widespread use, there are only about 350 million people who use it as their mother tongue. It is the official language of the Olympics.

2. By the end of this session…
You will understand:
Characteristics of effective
vocabulary instruction, and
A six-step process for
direct instruction in
vocabulary.

3. When?
When all teachers in a school focus on specific academic vocabulary and teach in the same way, school has a powerful comprehensive approach.
When all teachers in a district embrace and use the same comprehensive approach, it becomes even more powerful.

4. Impact of Direct Vocabulary Instruction
Research shows a student in the 50th percentile in terms of ability to comprehend the subject matter taught in school, with no direct vocabulary instruction, scores in the 50th percentile ranking.
The same student, after specific content-area terms have been taught in a specific way, raises his/her comprehension ability to the 83rd percentile.
Chapter 1
What students already know about the content is on of the strongest indicators of how well they will learn new information relative to the content (1)
Academic background knowledge affects more than just schooling (2)
Two students might have an equal amount of background knowledge. However, one student’s knowledge might relate to traditional school subjects The other student’s knowledge might be about nonacademic topics such as the best subway route to take to get downtown during rush hour. The firs student’s background knowledge is critical to success in school .. . (3)
We acquire background knowledge through the interaction of two factors: (1) our ability to process and store information [fluid intelligence] and (2) the number and frequency of our academically oriented experiences. (4)

5. Why?
Why does vocabulary instruction have such a profound effect on student comprehension of academic content?
What do these words have in common:
fall line, snow plow, corn snow, unweight, powder, packed powder, green slope, blue slope, back slope, mogul, carving, and face-plant
When would knowing this vocabulary be helpful to you?

6. Consider this…
Background knowledge is more important to understanding of reading than IQ.
Vocabulary instruction in specific content-area terms builds up student’s background knowledge in content area.
Students who understand content for example, in a state mathematics standards document regarding data analysis and statistics have understanding of terms such as mean, median, mode, range, standard deviation, and central tendency.
SCHOOLS CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE (13)
Innate intelligence is not as strongly related to academic achievement as once thought
A second type of intelligence is referred to as crystallized or learned intelligence . . Although a certain level of innate intelligence is important to academic success, learned intelligence is the stronger correlate of success in school . . .
If the knowledge and skill that students from advantaged backgrounds possess is learned rather than innate, then students who do not come from advantaged backgrounds can learn it too.. . To accomplish such a task schools must be willing to dedicate the necessary time and resources to enhancing the academic background knowledge of students, particularly those who do not come from affluent backgrounds. (14)

7. Systematic Instruction in Vocabulary
Benefits ALL students!
To close the gap between students who come from economically disadvantaged backgrounds and those who do not schools should use systematic programs of vocabulary instruction throughout the grades.
Recent federal documents have identified vocabulary instruction as one of the essential elements of literacy development.

8. Did You Know…
With the person behind you, decide if following statements are true or false.
1. Reading 14 minutes a day means reading over 1,000,000 words a year.
2. Preschool or children’s books expose you to more challenging vocabulary than do prime-time adult TV shows.
3. Vocabulary can be learned through reading and talking.
Barb:
All statements are true.
If students spend 25 minutes a day reading at a rate of 200 words per minute for 200 days, they will read a million words of text annually and encounter 15,000 and 30,000 unfamiliar words.
If we can learn through direct instruction 1 out of 20 words, yearly gain in vocabulary will be between 750 to 1500 words.

9. What It Means to Us…
It is not necessary for all vocabulary terms to be directly taught.
Yet, direct instruction of vocabulary has been proven to make an impact.
Yet, direct instruction does make a difference.
Three generalizations support the importance and usefulness of direct vocabulary instruction:
Estimates of vocabulary size at different ages and grade levels vary considerably.
Wide reading may not enhance vocabulary as much as once thought.
Direct vocabulary instruction works.

10. Creating a List of Academic Vocabulary Terms
Building Background Knowledge for Academic Achievement (Robert Marzano, 2004, ASCD Alexandria, Virginia) lists 7,923 terms in 11 subject areas extracted from national standards documents, organized into four grade-level intervals:
K-2, 3-5, 6-8, and 9-12.
Terms are listed in the appendix. Each school library has copies of the book in their professional reading sections.

11. Picking Vocabulary Words
Decisions should be made at teacher, school, or district level.
Using Building Academic Vocabulary Teacher’s Manual as a resource, a district, school, or teacher can create an academic vocabulary word list of a FEW terms from specific content areas.
Batavia teachers have identified draft lists of terms for each grade level and subject area. These terms are available in the Employee Common Area/Curriculum and Instruction/Marzano Training/Draft Lists of Essential Terms June 2006.

12. Selecting Academic Terms
Process used by committee
to generate district wide
(or school wide) list of terms is divided into five phases.

13. Decision Making
Decide on number of words to be taught at each grade level and, by
extension, across a
grade-level interval (K-2, 3-5,
6-8,or 9-12) or a multi-grade
span (e.g. K-6 or K-12).

14. Content – List of Terms
For each academic content area in program, create a rank-ordered list of words important to grade-level interval or multi-grade span by selecting words from list.
Add words that reflect local standards and curriculum materials.

15. How Many Terms?
Based on length of these lists, determine how many terms should be taught in each academic area.

16. Final List
Generate final list of terms for each academic area by making additions, deletions, or other alterations.

17. Assign
Terms to specific grades.

18. From the beginning…
Understand lists are not “cast in stone”, but rather additions and deletions may become necessary over time.

19. Six Steps for Effective Vocabulary Instruction
Based on an indirect approach
Steps are necessary for information to be stored in permanent memory
If terms are not stored in permanent memory, they are not added to academic background knowledge.
Three functions of memory (22)
Working memory
Permanent memory
Sensory memory
At least three interacting dynamics of working memory processing dictate whether information makes it into permanent memory.
One is the strength of the “memory trace” or the pathway to the information. [repeated practice] “students require about four exposures to information to adequately integrate it into their background knowledge. . .these exposures should be no more than 2 days apart (23)
Depth of processing is the second. . .deep processing of information adds detail to our understanding of the information. (24)
Elaboration is the third aspect. . .it deals with the variety of associations we make with information. Although depth of processing and elaboration are related elaboration refers to making new or varied connections. (24)
Effective processing of information in working memory depends on certain critical activities:
the information is processed multiple times,
detail is added, and
associations are made with other information. (24)

20. Six-Steps for Teaching New Terms
First 3 steps – introduce and develop initial understanding.
Last 3 steps – shape and sharpen understanding.

21. Step 1 Provide a description, explanation, or example of new term.
Our term for today is:
“prior knowledge.”
Take the participants through Step 1 by reading the slide.
Introduce and explain the term, definitions do not appear to be useful instructional tools, particularly in the initial stages of learning a word. Whereas conversational descriptions, explanations, and examples are very useful to students when first learning a term.
Explain prior knowledge using semantic features, the basis of how we know words. Ex. prior knowledge - life experiences we have had that help build an understanding of our world.
When I read about downhill skiing I have very little prior knowledge, and will have a harder time relating to or understanding what I am reading than a downhill skier would if they were to read the same article.

22. Students restate explanation of new term in own words.
Step 2
Students restate explanation
of new term in own words.
Show an example on chart paper of what a student description could look like.
Explain to participants that students’ descriptions are not comprehensive or even completely accurate, but they all represent a starting point (rough draft) for the students understanding of the term.
Goal is to have students store the meanings of words in long term memory.
The role of working memory tells us that students must process information actively and repeatedly for this to occur.
It is important that students not simply copy the teacher’s explanation of a term.

23. Students create a nonlinguistic representation of term.
Step 3
Students create a nonlinguistic representation of term.
Show the participants the student example of the drawing part of the notebook page.
Let participants know that modeling this procedure or allowing students to first work together are effective tools to the challenges of students not thinking they can draw or trying to overdraw the word.
This step is best done immediately after students have generated their own linguistic descriptions of the term.
In other words, Steps 1 – 3 should follow a related instructional sequence: Teacher presents new term along with description; students create their own linguistic description of term, then students create a nonlinguistic representation of it.

24. Step 4
Students periodically do activities that help add to knowledge of vocabulary
terms.
Show on chart paper where the extra space is for students to record new insights on the word.
Ensure multiple exposures to terms allowing students to take part in activities that allow them to interact with vocabulary terms in a variety of ways.
Remember after these activities students go back to their academic notebooks and record new insights.
Ex. “Remember capitol, with an O, always refers to a building.
If reviewing “symbiosis”, they might add, “related words: “ mutualism and parasitism.” If re-examining the math term “addition”, they might write, “Antonym-subtraction.”

25. Review Activity Solving Analogy Problems
One or two terms are missing. Please think about statements below, turn to your elbow partner and provide terms that will complete following analogies.
Bone is to skeleton as word is to ______.
Rhythm is to music as _____ is to _____.
Identify the common relationships between two sets of items or also known as identifying relationships between relationships.
Analogical thinking is perhaps the most complex activity involving similarities and differences and requires in-depth analysis of the content.
Can be either oral or written.
Analogy problems with 2 missing terms provide opportunities for students to think beyond the obvious relationships, gaining new insights. Rhythm is to music as words are to books.
Allow time to discuss and share aloud.
Work in pairs or small group.
Make sure they include a description of the relationship that both sets of terms have in common.
Like in the first example, students would explain that a bone is a part of the skeleton; thus the first item in the second part of the sentence (a word) must be part of whatever answer they provide as the second item.
To help understand analogies, can use a graphic organizer that has space for relationship to be written. In these analogies “as” is the relating factor.
See David Hyerle’s book Visual Tools for Constructing Knowledge.

26. Periodically students are asked to discuss terms with one another.
Step 5
Periodically students are asked to discuss terms with one another.
Plays a key role in development of academic vocabulary.
Discussion helps students encode information in their own words.
To stimulate discussion, teacher might pose questions each group will address.
Helps view things from different perspectives.
Allows for self-expression.
Students gain deeper understanding.
Increase probability that they will store the words in permanent memory.

27. “Talk a Mile a Minute” Activity
Teams of 3-4
Designate a “talker” for each round.
Try to get team to say each word by quickly describing them.
May not use words in category title or rhyming words.
Stahl & Clark (1987) found that students who knew they were not going to be called on during vocabulary instruction recalled fewer words than students who knew they might be called on in class.
Multiple exposures to information are necessary to anchor that information in permanent memory.
Students must process words multiple times.

28. Parts of Speech Noun Verb Adjective Preposition Conjunction Adverb
Pronoun
Learning is greatly enhanced if students interact with vocabulary in a variety of ways.
Teachers should vary the types of interactions students have with vocabulary terms.
Knowledge of a given vocabulary term deepens over time.
Different types of words require different types of instruction depending upon different syntactic functions.

29. Step 6
Periodically students are involved in games that allow them to play with terms.
Games present manageable challenges for students.
Games provide tasks that “challenge the individual’s present capacity, yet permit some control over the level of challenge faced.”
Games arouse curiosity.
Provide sufficient complexity so that outcomes are not always certain.
In Marzano and Christensen’s book Literacy Plus: Games for Vocabulary and Spelling they described in depth how teachers might use games in vocabulary instruction.
Vocabulary learning need not be drudgery for students. Activities should be designed to create an awareness and appreciation of words and to stimulate word fluency through experiences that are meaningful and enjoyable.

30. Vocabulary Charades Game Activity
Please stand.
Using your arms, legs, and bodies, show the meaning of each term below:
radius
diameter
circumference
Marzano & Christensen list games as “sponge activities” that enhance vocabulary instruction.
These games are intended to “soak up” the “dead time” that frequently occurs in classes. (Last few minutes of class to whine down or at the beginning of class to generate students’ enthusiasm and excitement.
When students are playing vocabulary games, they are having fun and experiencing vocabulary terms in a new context and seeing them from different perspectives.

31. More terms… Caffeine Eye-hand coordination Visualization
Autonomous phase of learning

32. Management 1, 2, 3 terms per week for 30 weeks to teach target terms.
Set aside time periodically to engage students in vocabulary activities, adding to knowledge base.
Allow students to discuss terms.
Encourage students to add information to notebooks.
Focus on terms that have a high probability of enhancing academic success.
Next slide will show an example of how to schedule this.

33. Example of Typical Two-Week Period
Our suggested guideline for implementation: vocabulary words in the next 9 weeks.

34. Student Notebook Use notebook from one year to the next
Select terms from 4 or 5 subject areas
Record subject area in border
Color-code pages
Alphabetize
Organize by subject area, unit, theme, or topic
Thus, a middle school student with classes in mathematics, science social studies, and language arts would have a section for each of these subject areas.
Students should also have a section of their notebooks dedicated to their SSR topic as Mary and Sue may have mentioned.
Notebook pages can be formatted so that each page has three columns with the following headings: My Description, Representation, and New Insight.

35. Final Thoughts
Teachers, schools, and districts that embrace a comprehensive approach of building academic vocabulary will see impressive results in classrooms and on achievement tests.