Professional Development-Using Multisensory Strategies to Teach Vocabulary

By Beth Csiszer

Bcsiszer@york.k12.sc.us

(704) 576-8523

Project Description: I taught the third and fourth grade teachers multisensory strategies to use when teaching affixes and roots to help teachers improve their students’ vocabulary scores.

Rationale: Our school’s vocabulary MAP scores typically drop from fall to spring in both 3rd and 4th grade. One of the school’s PDS goals is to improve 3rd grade’s vocabulary scores in MAP in the spring to 70% overall.

Project Results:

Teachers responded to a survey via Survey Monkey on the professional development training. The results were as follows:

Question Strongly Agree

Agree Unsure Disagree Strongly Disagree

Yes Not Yet No

1. I felt that session will benefit my classroom.

91.7% 8.3%

2.I have used the strategy in my classroom

83.3% 16.7%

3. I knew about multisensory strategies before the inservice.

33.3% 16.7% 50.%

4. I felt like my students were strong in vocabulary before the inservice.

8.3% 8.3% 58.3% 25%

5. My students have benefited from the vocabulary strategy Ms. Csiszer taught at the

75% 8.3% 16.7%

inservice.

The Strategy I Taught The Teachers:

Materials: Index Cards, a red, green and brown marker, Ziploc bags, list of affixes and roots

Steps:

1) Using the roots and affixes list determine how many affixes and roots you can teach in a block of time no longer than 30 minutes. I chose to teach 4 at a time for the age of students I was working with. If you teach too many at a time, they may not be able to retain the meanings.

2) Using the index cards, have students to write the prefix on the front in green, if it is a root, write it on brown, and if it is a suffix, write it in red.

3) On the back, have students write the meaning of the affix or root, and a gesture they can use to recall it. (Example: Re-pointing thumb backwards). Finally, have students write examples of words that use the affix or root, as well as the definition of the word using what the student knows. Do not use the technical dictionary definition. (For example, redo means to do again.)

4) Once the students have made the index cards for the lesson, practice the gestures while stating aloud what the prefix means (Example: While pointing thumb backwards, students say re means again).

5) Each lesson, review what you taught the last lesson first. Next, introduce the new affixes and roots. Lastly, review all of the affixes and roots learned so far.

Extension:

-Once your students have learned enough of the affixes and roots, you may want to play games with them such as Bingo, Jingo, or Charades.

Sample Breakdown of How to Teach Affixes and Roots

Lesson 1:Re-Non-Un-Dis-

Lesson 2:PortPhotoBioscribe

Lesson 3:-ful-ment-er/or-less

References:

Beaumont, J, & Erlam, R. (2010). It's not all Greek to me: teaching word parts and word part

strategy to intermediate pasifika students. New Zealand Studies in Applied Linguistics,

16(2), 17-36.

Boyle, R. (2009). The legacy of disglossa in english vocabulary: what learners need to know.

Language Awareness, 18(1), 19-30.

Schneider, E, & Evers, T. (2009). Linguistic intervention techniques for at-risk english language

learners. Foreign Language Annuals, 42(1), 55-75.

Tindall, E, & Nisbet, D. (2010). Exploring the essential components of reading. Journal of Adult

Education, 39(1), 1-9.