In educational circles, there are few definitive works that lend themselves to a revolution in the classroom. Among those notable works have been those of John Dewey, Donald Eichhorn, B.S. Bloom, and Howard Gardner. But in 2002 a new book of research and instructional methodology was introduced that I believe holds the potential to once more revolutionize classroom instruction.
Bringing Words to Life: Robust Vocabulary Instruction was written by the University of Pittsburgh and Appalachian State research team of Isabel L. Beck (whom I have had the honor of meeting), Margaret G. McKeown, and Linda Kucan. When I first became interested in vocabulary instruction (my dissertation will be on vocabulary and academic language) I decided to do just a simple search on several search engines to see was out there. Their names were everywhere. They are top caliber researchers in the area of vocabulary instruction and are quoted often in the National Reading Panel Report.
But it was not until I read Bringing Words to Life that I began to appreciate the caliber of their research. First, some of their findings were intriguing. Educators readily admit that language is first learned through auditory means. And while we do constantly read to students in the earlier grades, exposing them to exciting new words, we rarely take advantage of the opportunity to directly instruct the meaning of those words.
The researchers also found that many of the words we take pains in teaching students are words that are already in their oral vocabulary. So we are wasting time. They also found that if the teacher could successfully create a schema (image) of the word so that it is thus given a meaningful context, students have the capacity to learn much harder words than we previously thought. To bring this instruction, then, teachers had to think outside the box of graded word lists. They found this a flaw in our thinking.
So they developed a system whereby students are read a read aloud. The reading actually comes from literature already used in the classroom at grade level. The instructor then pulls words from the text that are directly taught to the students and given an explanation instead of a definition. For example, for the word comforting a kindergartner might be told, comforting is something someone or something does to you when you are hurt or feeling sad. The students will then be asked, Which would a crying baby find more comforting, lying on a scratchy blanket or being held by her mother? Next, the children are shown a picture visual of a boy who is sad embracing an adorable puppy close to his chest.
Through other exercises, the teacher reinforces the usage of the word while placing it in the word wizard wall chart and tallying the number of meaningful times the word is used during the week. And through this process, something wonderful happens. Children begin to enlarge their oral vocabularies, transfer meanings, recognize the words in other texts, and commit the words to their written vocabularies!
Earlier this year, Drs. Beck and McKeown helped Harcourt Achieve (Steck Vaughn) to develop a new program to deliver the methodology found in this book. Elements of Reading- Vocabulary was the final results of their endeavors. I have been personally involved in placing this program in schools and training teachers in how to use it. The results have been phenomenal. And just as Beck and company proclaim in their book, teachers are excited about the vocabulary instruction, students find it becomes their favorite time of day, and the students really do use the words!
The 148-page book also contains a great list of reference works for further research (yes, I will be checking those out), a listing by grade level of popular works that might be used and the words that can be pulled, and the text also has models for the teachers to utilize.
I highly recommend this book and suggest it be used in Study Groups as job-embedded staff development in schools. Teachers are finding that using their method of instruction, students are really turning around. I have also seen the material used successfully with ELL students. The Guilford Press publishes the book. You may access their website at www.guilford.com. If you would like more information about the Harcourt Achieve Elements of Reading-Vocabulary also written by Beck and McKeown, you may visit their website at www.harcourtachieve.com, click on the Steck Vaughn catalog and put Elements of Reading in the search. It will bring up the entire reading program, and then you can just click on Vocabulary.
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