1. Contextualize words: Put simply, this means presenting new words in context, not in lists. Students should study words in the context in which texts present them.
2. Provide friendly explanations: These employ general terms that students can readily understand, not gobbledygook dictionary definitions. We often call these student-friendly definitions. Teachers can reference the dictionary definition, but it is not the focal point of this step.
3. Provide another context for the word: Make sure students know that the context in which they found the word may not be the only context in which they can use it. Providing varied contexts helps students connect to the word.
4. Provide opportunities for students to actively process word meanings: Have them connect the known to the unknown. Ask questions that use more than one target word at a time to help students see relationships and contrasts between words. Providing similar and contrasting relationships (using, for example, language such as is like and isn’t like) between words is quite helpful for students to move word knowledge from unknown to known.
5. Provide many encounters with the words over time: Revisiting words and providing multiple exposures are paramount in word learning. Encounters need to include multiple applications of the words, meaning that students use the words in different contexts, different ways, and so on. The more the words pop up in the students’ reading, writing, speaking, listening, and viewing, the more likely students are to remember them.
Beck’s step 5, encounters over time, connects directly to Marzano’s steps 4, 5, and 6. Additionally, Beck’s step 4 mirrors the second part of Graves’s model.
These three models overlap significantly, and we can glean much good advice from them. We have certainly returned to their ideas over and over for guidance and inspiration in our own teaching careers. However, we feel that teachers, as part of the learning communities they represent, should take the best from what others have researched and proposed, consider the model we describe in the following section, and devise instruction that will work best for them and their students.
The Blended Vocabulary Model
We propose a new, three-dimensional model to represent a comprehensive approach to vocabulary learning. It is a flexible model that brings together the best aspects of several existing structures, including those from Marzano, Graves, and Beck. Distinct advantages include allowing for many effective strategies within its structure, the ability for teachers to add past successful lessons to the model, and the easy applicability of its components to a schoolwide or districtwide vocabulary effort.
Briefly, our model consists of three parts. Why only three? Because three is concise (and precise) enough for busy teachers to keep in mind as they provide instruction in all the concepts and topics they teach on any given day. Three also implies a sense of balance, like a three-legged stool. With three components, it’s difficult for one component to greatly overshadow or outweigh the others. The components we recommend include the following.
1. Modeling: Model robust vocabulary and interest in words. All adults with whom students interact during the school day should do this.
2. Explicit instruction: Teach students targeted words and proven word-learning strategies so they can tackle learning words on their own. Use digital tools as part of instruction, review, and practice.
3. Incidental learning: Provide for incidental vocabulary learning. Acquiring vocabulary through incidental experience occurs through a print-rich environment and various literacy experiences, including read-alouds, independent reading, and school and community events like dramatic performances, family literacy nights, and poetry slams, to name just a few. Setting up experiences such as these provides the backdrop and support for student-led, incidental word learning.
See figure 2.1 for an illustration of how the model functions.
Figure 2.1: The blended vocabulary model.
As noted previously in this chapter, this model draws from key aspects of the Marzano (2004), Beck et al. (2013), and Graves (2006) models, which also overlap and align in multiple ways. See table 2.1 (page 22) for a quick reference and comparison of the key aspects of each of these models and our blended model.
Modeling
Part 1, modeling, calls attention to what many excellent teachers of vocabulary do almost seamlessly. These teachers speak to students in ways that other teachers may not. For example, Angela once knew a teacher who would use all sorts of synonyms for basic or overused words with her students. If she needed a student to take the attendance information or some other document to the office, she might say something like, “Jackson, please ambulate to the main office and deliver this for me,” or “Please convey this document to the authority who is noted at the top.” She strived to use unfamiliar and sometimes far more sophisticated words to replace words like walk, go, take, say, good, and nice. Because she often accompanied unfamiliar words with a known task or exaggerated gestures, her students quickly grasped a basic definition. They enjoyed figuring out what she was saying, and many of them also delighted in using the terms they had learned in their other classes. Other teachers were impressed that these students, many of whom struggled mightily in reading and writing, learned useful, rich words through such indirect means. This is a great example of an intentional, embedded method of promoting rich word learning.
Table 2.1: A Comparison of Four Vocabulary Models
Another part of modeling is attending to unusual or unknown words when they appear in text a class is reading aloud, in a video they are viewing, or in announcements coming over the loudspeaker—anywhere students see and hear words. That’s where teachers can find an opportunity to model enthusiasm about words and, if the moment is right, provide students with a quick synonym or summary for a word so that they can begin to understand it, at the least, on a surface level. In the current climate of demanding standards, abundant content, and countless hours of testing, teachers often say they don’t have enough time to teach. Remembering to be a good model of word learning takes very little extra time during the day. Instead, it’s an integrated approach to excite enthusiasm for word learning that can go far in enhancing literacy learning for our students.
This portion of our model aligns most closely with Beck’s advice about providing many encounters with words over time. Teachers who remember to use certain synonyms for words like walk and talk, for example, will support their students in using the same more precise and less common words. This segment of our model also follows Graves’s suggestion to foster word consciousness. Teachers are, in our opinion, perhaps the best models of being interested in and delighted by words.
Explicit Instruction
The second part of the model involves explicit instruction, including the support of digital tools. Explicit instruction is obvious in Marzano’s model beginning with (and perhaps appearing most prominently in) the first step, where the teacher provides a description, explanation, or example of the new term. Graves urges teachers to teach both specific words and word-learning strategies, which are encompassed in our model. And lastly, Beck’s steps focus squarely on explicit instruction as they direct teachers to contextualize words, provide student-friendly definitions,