Vocabulary...what's in it?

Today I attended a Reading First conference with Dr. Elfrieda Heibert. Dr. Hiebert is an adjunct professor at the University of California-Berkeley. She is fabulous!

We began the day with the changes that we must make in the instruction of vocabulary. Dr. Hiebert shared that as human beings, we are different from other species…we leave a trail of what we think—through reading, writing, and oral expression of our language.

Today was about concepts. About ideas. Reading is really about getting kids to think!

Language is the way in which we learn things. We’ve never been at a time like this where the knowledge of human kind is at the click of a button. Scary, but also very wonderful.

Words give us labels. They give us new ideas. Beginnings of ideas sit with words. It’s not about getting kids to read, but to get them to make distinctions in ideas.

Dr. Hiebert suggests that much of the research that she has been a part of, as well as best practice research, suggests that we as educators need to shift from narrative stories being at the center of our sharing, to informational text as being the center. The primary diet in schools to this point has been narrative, and we need to switch that to informational text to get up to speed in the digital age—in terms of content.

In the past 4-5 years, Science has declined substantially, primarily in the elementary setting. Content areas need to be beefed up! She encourages educators to shift more to Science/Social studies lessons and activities for enhanced vocabulary development.

Dr. Hiebert also indicated that we need to provide students with tier 2 words in every day events. This encouragement came with finding synonyms to those every day events in our classroom settings to enrich vocabulary. How COULD we teach enriched vocabulary for every day events in our room?

The following are some of Dr. Heibert's examples:

Ex: Today we’re going to saunter to lunch. (How many other ways could we walk to lunch??? Kids come up with ideas!)

Our way of speaking today is to murmur. We will need to strain to discern what people are saying.

Be certain to enunciate clearly.

Your task is to get your desk into shipshape form.

It’s time to commence cleaning off your desks.

All of these examples are like receiving the gift of words--and each involves direct instruction.

I recalled my former principal making an announcement at the beginning of the week with a vocabulary word for the week. This small thing made kids THINK about words!

We are living in a fast language time. Language is constantly changing! We as 21st Century educators must change instruction to match the times.