Word Hikes with Little Tikes

Keith Pruitt, Ed.SWords of Wisdom Educational

Consultingwww.woweducationalconsulting.com

Brain Gym

• I’m going to show you a word. You will have one minute to form as many words from it as possible.

• Assimilated

Tell Us About Hart and Risley• Demographic study to determine the

impact on oral vocabulary based on the social climate of a child’s family.

• Three distinct categories: professional class, working class, welfare class.

• Followed family for 2 ½ years.• Created a word list for each child

based on exposure and usage during the research.

The Most Important of the Findings

…the more parents talked to their children, the faster the children’s vocabularies were growing and the higher the children’s IQ test scores at age 3 and later.

Hart and Risley, Meaningful Differences, p. xx

Oral language is the foundation for understanding written text. Word knowledge is the cornerstone of reading comprehension.

Why is oral language important?

Professional 45 million

wordsWorking 26 million

words Welfare 13 million words

From Hart and Risely Demographic study (1995)

…to keep the language experience of welfare children equal to that of working-class children, the welfare children would need to receive 63,000 words per week of additional language experience (Hart & Risley, p. 201).

Can This Gap Be Closed?

This study was done more than 20 years ago.

Are there factors that have changed the results of this study?

YES!

Since we are having fewer conversations in ALL homes the gaps have decreased.

Even the children of professional homes are coming to us with fewer words.

How Important is this Issue?

“…when children do not understand the meanings of important words in a text, they are unlikely to understand the text.”(p. 84)

--Tanya Christ and Christine Wang, Bridging the Vocabulary Gap, Young Children, July 2010

About thirty-five minutes have passed since the children left the room. We look up from our work to check the XXXX, glance toward the XXXX, and notice the beautiful day outside. We scan the room one more time to be certain all is ready for XXXX, grab our coats and keys, and head quickly to the door—still with enough daylight and enough energy for a long XXXX with the XXXX.

Reading is from The Daily Five, p. 6 as quoted in The Importance of Readability by Lori Sabo, The Daily Cafe

What factors became important in your selection of words?

ContextBackground knowledge (experience)Guessing

FIVE MISTAKES = 93% ACCURACY

Research shows that to accelerate reading the accuracy rate needs to be at 98%.

Independent Reading levelSuccessful comprehensionAnything less slows the rate of improvement; anything below 90% doesn’t improve at all

Some Proven Factors

• Students do not passively add words to their vocabularies by just hearing them (Bloom, 2002) [If so, I could learn Spanish by just listening to Spanish tapes.]

• Children must become word conscious (interested in) (Graves, 2000)

• Students develop a schema for words sometimes called fast mapping (Carey, 1978)

The Work of J R Anderson

SensoryMemory

WorkingMemory

Discards

OR

PermanentMemory Files

Anderson, J.R. (1995). Learning and memory: An integrated approach. New York: John Wiley & Sons

Let there be strategies!

Direct Instruction

Using the Beck

Method

Beck, McKeown, Kucan

• Vocabulary must first be orally introduced.• Vocabulary is not grade specific.• Words must be explained, not defined.• Must be contextualized.• Multiple usages in a meaningful context (8-10).• Create Schema (visual representation)• Students reflect with each other• Three Tiers of Vocabulary

From the DIG program produced by Abrams Learning Trends

From the DIG program produced by Abrams Learning Trends

• Oral Language Development Conversation

• Introduce the WOW words (focus words)

• Create visual representation (teacher/student)

• Check for meaning in context

bustling

antenna

© Art by Keith

Exaggerate

Beck and McKeown, Elements of Reading Vocabulary, Steck Vaughn, 2004

Fatigue The bear was very fatigued from walking so far.

Flexible

WORD NECKLACE

Reading to students helps create background knowledge that in turn builds vocabulary, comprehension, and fluency.

How often do you read to your students?

Create a Visual Classroom!

Peer Reading

Let’s Review

1. We have shown the importance of learning words at young ages

2. We have given you some dynamics of how this vocabulary instruction should be delivered in the classroom

3. We have given you numerous strategies for teaching vocabulary in your classroom

4. And hopefully we have had some fun.

Thank YouKeith Pruitt

Words of Wisdomwww.woweducationalconsulting.com

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References• Allington, R.L. (2012). What Really Matters for Struggling Readers: Designing Research Based

Programs. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.• Allington, R.L. & Gabriel, Rachael E. (March 2012). Every Child, Every Day. Educational Leadership,

69 (6), 10-15.• Anderson, J.R. (1995). Learning and memory: An integrated approach. New York: John Wiley &

Sons.• Beck, I., M. McKeown, & L. Kucan. 2002. Bringing words to life: Robust vocabulary instruction. New

York: Guilford.• Bloom, P. (2002). How Children Learn the Meaning of Words. Cambridge: MIT Press.• Carey, S. (1978). The child as word learner. In Linguistic theory and psychological reality, eds. M.

Halle, J. Bresnan, & G. Miller, 264–93. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.• Christ, Tanya & Wang, Christine. (July 2010). Bridging the Vocabulary Gap, Young Children.• Ehri, L. C., Dreyer, L. G., Flugman, B., & Gross, A. (2007). Reading Rescue: An effective tutoring

intervention model for language minority students who are struggling readers in first grade. American Educational Research Journal, 44(2), 414–448.

• Graves, M. 2000. A vocabulary program to complement and bolster a middle-grade comprehension program. In Reading for meaning: Fostering comprehension in the middle grades, eds. B. Taylor, M. Graves, & P. van den Broek, 116–35. Newark, DE: International Reading Association.

• Hart, Betty & Risley, Todd R. (1995). Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experience of Young Children. Baltimore: Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co.

• Pruitt, Keith. (2011). It’s All About Words: Reading Instruction in the Classroom (3rd Edition) Old Hickory, TN: Words of Wisdom.

• Sabo, Lori. (2016). The Importance of Readability. Retrieved from The Daily Café. Retrieved at https://www.thedailycafe.com/articles/The-Importance-of-Readability