Developing Vocabulary and Concepts

By: Ashley Hildebrant and Brittany Clawson

“Teaching words well means giving students multiple opportunities to develop word meaning and learn how words are conceptually related to one another in the texts that they are studying.”

3 Types of Vocabulary

1. General Vocabulary- consists of words with acknowledged meanings in common usage.

 2. Specialized vocabulary- is made up of words from everyday life, general vocabulary that takes on specialized meanings when adapted to a particular content area.

 3. Technical Vocabulary- consists of words that have usage and application only in a particular subject matter field.

Experiences, Concepts, and Words

Words are labels for concepts however; a single concept represents much more than a single word.

What does it mean to know a word? Depends on how well we understand the relationships among direct experiences, concepts, and words.

Learning is much more intense and Meaningful when it develops through the child’s first hand experience.

What are concepts?

Concepts create a mental image, which may represent anything that can be grouped together by common features or similar criteria: objects, symbols, ideas, processes and events. Common Element or relationship.

Concepts are similar to schemata!!  For EVERY concept there is an

example!!!

Using Graphic Organizers to Make Connections among Key Concepts

A graphic organizer is a diagram that uses content vocabulary to help students anticipate concepts and their relationships to one another in the reading material.

Steps in making a graphic organizer for a chapter:

Analyze the vocabulary and list the important words

Arrange the list of words Add to the Scheme vocabulary terms that

you believe the students understand. Evaluate the organizer. Introduce students to learning tasks As you complete the learning task, relate

new information to the organizer

Activating what students know about words

Graphic organizers can be used to activate the student’s prior knowledge of the vocabulary words in the given assignment or study unit and also clarify their understanding of concepts as they study texts.

A graphic organizer can be used in many ways:

To show the relationship in a thematic unit in a chapter or chapter subsection

To build a frame of reference for students as they approach new material

Activate prior knowledge of the vocabulary words in a text assignment or unit of study

Clarify their understanding of concepts as they study text

Word Exploration

Word exploration is a writing to learn strategy that works well as a vocabulary activity.

A word exploration activity invites students to write quickly and spontaneously, a technique called free writing. › The purpose of free writing is to get down on

paper everything a student knows about a topic in just a few minutes. This activity will activate schema and long term memory.

How to activate what students know…

Brainstorming, List-Group-Label, Word Sorts, Word Walls and Knowledge Ratings are also great activities to activate what students know about words.

Word Wall

Word walls provide easy access to words students need. The specific organization of the word wall will match the teacher's purpose.

The most helpful word walls grow and change throughout the year and are used as a learning reference.

Knowledge Rating

Knowledge ratings get readers to analyze what their prior knowledge is about the topic.

Term Know It Heard it

Not Much

Line X

Segment

X

Ray X

Defining Words in the Context of Their Own Use

Sometimes students have a hard time knowing what certain words mean and how they are used in the materials they are reading. There are two strategies that help with clarifying what words mean and how they are used.

VSS- Vocabulary Self Collection Strategy

Promotes long term acquisition of language in an academic discipline. Steps:

Divide the class into teams of two

Present the word each team has selected to the class ( where it’s found, what team thinks it means, why the team thinks class should learn it)

Good example of VSS Strategy is the flash card method with the word on the front, definition on back, and also adding a picture is helpful.

CD Word Mapping- Concept of Definition Word Maps provides a framework

for organizing conceptual information in the process of defining a word.

CD word map instruction supports vocabulary and concept learning by helping students internalize a strategy for defining and clarifying the meaning of unknown words.

REINFORCING AND EXTENDING VOCABULARY KNOWLEDGE AND CONCEPTS

Students need many experiences, real and vicarious to develop word meaning and concepts. They need to use, test, and manipulate technical terms in instructional situations that capitalize on reading, writing, speaking, and listening.

In having students to do these things, you create the kind of natural language environment that is needed to extend vocabulary and concept development. There are many activities that can be used to develop these skills.

Activity Examples… RTI framework helps

teachers plan lessons so that students can learn vocabulary concepts as they relate to their understanding of the text. RTI supports thoughtful vocabulary instruction that allows each student to experience growth

 

There are also some activities examples that help extend and reinforce vocabulary knowledge and concepts.

Semantic Feature Analysis (SFA) – establishes a meaningful link between students’ prior knowledge and words that are conceptually related to one another. As a teaching activity, SFA is easily suited to before or after reading instructional routines.

› Categorization Activities› Concept Circles› Vocabulary Triangles› Magic Squares

VOCABULARY-BUILDING STRATEGIES

Showing learner s how to construct meaning for unfamiliar words encountered during reading helps them develop strategies needed to monitor comprehension and increase their own vocabularies.

Demonstrating how to use context, word structure, and the dictionary provides students with several basic strategies for vocabulary learning that will last a lifetime.

USING CONTEXT TO APPROXIMATE MEANING

Constructing meaning from context is one of the most useful strategies at the command of proficient readers.

Showing readers who struggle how to make use of context builds confidence and competence and teaches the inquiry process necessary to unlock the meaning of troublesome technical and general vocabulary encountered during reading.

Typographic Clues, Syntactic and Semantic Clues, Logographic Cues are helpful tools to help struggling readers.

Context- Related Activities

Readers who build and use contextual knowledge are able to recognize fine shades of meaning in the way words are used. They know the concept behind the word well enough to use that concept in different contexts.

 Modified Cloze Passages OPIN

OPIN

Students pair off into groups but they complete a sentence exercise individually and once completed, convince their word choice is the best.

The best choice must have a reasonable defense.

WORD STRUCTURE

In addition to emphasizing context as a vocabulary building strategy, showing learners how to approximate word meaning through word structure is another important aspect of vocabulary building.

A word itself provides information clues about its meaning. The smallest meaning in a word is called morpheme. Analyzing a words structure, morphemic analysis, is a secondary vocabulary building strategy that students can use to predict meaning.

The Dictionary is a Great Source for Learning!

The uses of context and word structure are strategies that give struggling readers insight into the meanings of unknown words. Rarely does context or word structure help learners derive precise definitions from keywords. When, a reader doesn’t understand the meaning of a word the dictionary is a great resource for students. One way to make a dictionary functional resource is to use it to verify educated guesses about word meaning revealed through context or word structure.

Tips for helping students use a dictionary:

Help students determine the “best fit” between a word and its definition.

If you assign a list of words to look up in the dictionary, list them selectively.

Help students with the pronunciation key in the glossary or dictionary as the need arises.

Vocabulary development is important for understanding the concept of what words mean!!!