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Page 1: Best Strategies for Academic Vocabulary - · PDF fileBest Strategies for Academic Vocabulary Virginia Dept. of Education Title III Statewide Consortium Conference Audrey Cohan, Ed.D

Best Strategies for Academic VocabularyVirginia Dept. of Education

Title III Statewide Consortium Conference

Audrey Cohan, Ed.D. Molloy College

Rockville Centre, NY

[email protected]

Audrey_Cohan Created with Dr. Andrea Honigsfeld

Page 2: Best Strategies for Academic Vocabulary - · PDF fileBest Strategies for Academic Vocabulary Virginia Dept. of Education Title III Statewide Consortium Conference Audrey Cohan, Ed.D

Building Academic

Language in Every

Classroom

Gain ideas to foster student

interaction

Integrate the use of complex texts

to build language

Develop ways to enhance students’ language output

Create language objectives

Adapted from

Zwiers, 2012

AGENDA

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What Is Academic Language?

• Negotiate a definition collectively

• Fortify your collective definition with examples from your own

practice

Page 4: Best Strategies for Academic Vocabulary - · PDF fileBest Strategies for Academic Vocabulary Virginia Dept. of Education Title III Statewide Consortium Conference Audrey Cohan, Ed.D

Why Is Academic Language So Difficult to Teach?

Page 5: Best Strategies for Academic Vocabulary - · PDF fileBest Strategies for Academic Vocabulary Virginia Dept. of Education Title III Statewide Consortium Conference Audrey Cohan, Ed.D

Why Is Academic Language So Difficult to Teach to English Language Learners? Challenge

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Academic Language Focus

• Word-level

• Sentence-level

• Text-level

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The Features of Academic Language

• Understanding

• Language Functions

• Word/Phrase level,

• Sentence level, and

• Discourse levels

• What exactly will the students

DO with the language in the

lesson and how will they

USE it?

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Page 9: Best Strategies for Academic Vocabulary - · PDF fileBest Strategies for Academic Vocabulary Virginia Dept. of Education Title III Statewide Consortium Conference Audrey Cohan, Ed.D

From Jeff Zwiers

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Public Service Announcements!

What would we say in 60 seconds?

What would you

tell content

teachers about the

features of

academic

language?

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Debbie Zacarian

The Literacy Suitcase…..Literacy behaviors of learners who carry academic language and can be symbolized as the suitcase students carry in and out of school.

The suitcase is filled with rich vocabulary, cultural ways of being and acting, decision-making skills, or dialect skills. (Ex: storytelling skills, family traditions, gospel songs or novellas)

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Academic Language: Word Level

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Stop & Process

How do you support

word-level academic language development?

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Tiered Vocabulary Instruction

Tier 1 Basic words

—feel, mad, good, speak

Tier 2 High frequency, but challenging words

—investigate, expectation, clarify, explain, analyze

Tier 3 Infrequently used words that are often discipline-specific

—evaporation, pupa, federal, simile

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Two Essential Criteria for Choosing Target Words

• Importance and Utility

MILEAGE

• Conceptual Understanding

POWER

Page 16: Best Strategies for Academic Vocabulary - · PDF fileBest Strategies for Academic Vocabulary Virginia Dept. of Education Title III Statewide Consortium Conference Audrey Cohan, Ed.D

PAINT CHIP VOCABULARY CARDS https://www.teachingchannel.org/videos/build-student-vocabulary

Page 17: Best Strategies for Academic Vocabulary - · PDF fileBest Strategies for Academic Vocabulary Virginia Dept. of Education Title III Statewide Consortium Conference Audrey Cohan, Ed.D

TALK IN 2s & 3s

17

What SQUARES

with my beliefs

What’s going

AROUND

in my head

THREE POINTS

I want to remember

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