2011 Institute Student Curriculum

Academic Intervention Time: Vocabulary

Within this document, you will find the following resources to help you plan the
vocabulary instruction of your Academic Intervention time:
 Context
 Procedure/Activities (including materials)
 Grade-Level Guidelines

Context
What is vocabulary instruction?
Vocabulary instruction is one of the most important pre-requisite building blocks
to reading comprehension as it helps to build a student’s background knowledge
around a specific text. Many struggling readers will need explicit instruction in
vocabulary instruction to aid in their comprehension of a text. When engaging in
this explicit vocabulary instruction, the most effective approaches require that the
teacher:
(1) Carefully choose a limited number of words and provide direct,
student-friendly explanations of their meanings.
(2) Create meaningful interactions with the words in a variety of formats
and contexts.
(3) Ensure that students have multiple exposure and practice to the new
words.
More information about specific and explicit vocabulary instruction can be found
in your Elementary Literacy text on pg. 92-108.

How do I choose the right vocabulary words to teach?

According to researcher Isabel Beck and Margaret McKeown it is important to
group words that students will interact with into three tiers:
 Tier one: the most basic words, such as water, picture, girl, money that
rarely require explicit instruction in school, as their meanings are acquired
through day-to-day conversation.
 Tier two: words that occur in the vocabulary of “mature language users” and
are used in a variety of written and oral communication, such as
compromise, absurd, diligent, and typical.
 Tier three: words that are mostly unique to a particular content area, such as
watershed, rhombus, amnesty, and peninsula.

Depending on your purpose you will choose different tiers to teach during
Academic intervention. As a rule of thumb if you are teaching literacy you would
use tier two words and if you are teaching a content area you will use tier three
words.
How many words should I introduce?

There is not magic number of words that you should teach students each day.
However researchers generally agree that students can learn three new
words a day, at most. You will need to consider these questions as you
carefully pick the limited number of words you will want to explicitly teach
and have students practice.
 What words will be helpful for students to know that will enable them to
understand that rest of the story?
 Which one of these words would you choose to directly teach students as
they read?
 Which words are important and have high utility, appearing frequently across
a variety of domains?
 Which words have instructional potential and can be worked with in many
different ways so that students can understand their meanings and connect
them to other words and concepts?
 Which words will students be able to understand conceptually?

What does vocabulary instruction look like in Academic Intervention Time?

One of the most important things to note when planning for vocabulary instruction
is providing student friendly definitions of a few targeted words and
creating meaningful ways to interact with these words. One of the best
ways to do this is to ensure that you model how words fit in context
beyond the story or text and then helping students to engage in
meaningful activities to internalize each of the words. Pages 95-96 of the
Elementary Literacy Text provides strong guidelines for how to approach
thinking about this kind of planning.

For Academic Intervention Time, here are two short descriptions of how you
should approach inserting vocabulary instruction into your mini-lessons.

Option 1: Best for K-8 before Guided Reading

Plan for 3-5 tier two words that you think students will aid in student
comprehension of the daily guided reading text. Have student quickly practice
and define each of these words as part of your before reading portion of the
lesson to build background knowledge of the story.

Option 2: Other Content Areas (especially science and social studies)

You may have more time during academic intervention than other subject areas
to explicitly re-teach and review subject specific vocabulary. Focus on tier
3 words and plan a mini practice lesson using one of the strategies below
that enables students to really delve deeper into these subject specific
words so that they are ready to engage in core instructional block’s lesson
that day or concepts that week.
Meaningful Vocabulary Activities
 Vocabulary Journal
 Weekly Vocabulary Practice/Routine
 Vocabulary Games

Vocabulary Journal:
This is ongoing notebook that you can have student write in new vocabulary
words that they learn in different content areas. The organization and structure
of this vocabulary journal is very important.

Ways to teach new words using a vocabulary journal:

1. Read all words aloud, have students repeat while looking at word
2. Give students opportunity to predict definitions/share what they know
3. After presenting your “description,” ask students to write it in their own
words
4. Writing any examples or synonyms that go with the word.
5. Creating a drawing to represent the word.

Key things to keep in mind when implementing a vocabulary journal

1) Splitting up the notebook to include all content areas.
2) Deciding whether or not you want the book to be organized alphabetically
or by concept, unit, week, topic.
3) Creating both a table of contents and Index tab for each section of the
notebook.
4) Ensuring that you have a systematic uniform procedure of adding new
entries.

Example of what an entry can look like:

New word: Definition as a short sentence using student friendly

language:
Negative Less than zero or to the left of zero on the number line.

Examples and Drawing

Synonyms of new
words

 Money that you

owe
 Credits that are - 18
due
 Temperature
below zero
 Minus
Weekly Vocabulary Routine/Practice
Create different ways that you will review and practice vocabulary words each
day of the week that you will repeat on a weekly basis. Here is an example of
what this can look like below. Teachers should model the procedures of each of
these activities during the first week. Consistency during the five weeks will be
key so that student will be able to automatically enter into independent practice
on a daily level during AIH and use time wisely.

Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday

Letter Cloze Crossword New insights Vocab quiz.
Pyramids sentences puzzles or sentences

Monday: Letter Pyramids

Students write out one letter of each of the

words at a time to create word pyramids. This
aids in their spelling and word recognition.
Tuesday: Cloze Sentences

Cloze sentences require a student to read a sentence and then supply a

key word that completes the meaning of the sentence. This shows you
whether or not students have fully internalized the definition and can
apply it in different contexts.

Wednesday: Crossword Puzzles

Provide several different clues for the

different vocabulary words that you are
learning throughout the week and have
students complete the cross word
puzzle. There are several online
internet sites that can help you create
these quickly and easily below:

http://puzzlemaker.discoveryeducation.
com/CrissCrossSetupForm.asp

http://www.crosswordpuzzlegames.co
m/create.html
Thursday: New Insights or sentences

Have students research each different

word and write a sentence to describe
any new insights they have learned
about the word.

These can include looking up the word

in the dictionary or writing down
anything new about the word that they
learned during the week’s lessons that
they have not applied the word to that
week.

If nothing is new then students can

write the word and use it in a different
context.

Friday: Vocabulary Quiz

This can take many different forms whether multiple choice, short answer
definitions, fill in the blacks or matching words to their definitions.

Vocabulary Games:
These are quick and fun ways to reinforce and practice new words with students
during academic intervention time either for extended practice or for a quick
close out of the mini lesson.

Tips when playing vocabulary games:

1) Be extremely specific with directions
2) Be meticulously clear with expectations
3) Give kids more and more roles as they get better
4) Make sure majority of kids know majority of definitions prior to playing
5) Facilitate competition!
List of Games
Name of Game Description
Dice Game Give pairs of students 1 die. Ask student to choose words. Pairs
roll and depending on number, use word in some way (describe it,
spell it, use it in a sentence, give an example, give a non-
example).
Beach Ball Write the same categories from the dice game on the sections of
Game a beach ball. Pass it around (downfall: fewer kids practice and
recommended on for closing of mini lesson).
Cloze Ask students to write about or make a Venn Diagram about two
Comparisons academic terms.
Pictionary In small groups or whole-class, take turns drawing pictures
representing the terms and have other students guess the word.
Whiteboards Give clues or ask a student to give clues and then have students
write the term down on whiteboards and hold them up.
Taboo Split into two group. Provide students with a list of words they
cannot use to describe their words. Students generate clues to
describe words while the other student(s) guess the word.
Super Give current words and past words a point value. Ask students to
Sentence write a sentence (or two) with as many words as possible.
Whomever has the most points wins.
Fly swatter Give two students a fly swatter. Have words on the boards/on
table. Give a verbal description. Students have to hit word first.
Crossword On Thursdays, students exchange the crosswords they created
exchange for homework the previous night.