Notes from Inside Words: Tools for Teaching Academic Vocabulary, Grades 412 by Janet Allen

Concept Circles Teacher makes a circle and divides it into four equal parts. Teacher writes a word or phrase in each part of the circle. Students are to write next to the circle how the four words relate to one another. Concept Ladder I didnt get the explanation of the strategy, but I tried to summarize it here. What makes more sense to me is the example worksheet Allen used which I took a screenshot of and put below. Summary: To be used throughout a whole unit. Teacher asks the following questions about the terms in the order given throughout the term as they apply. 1. 2. 3. 4. What is it a kind of or what are kinds of it? What is it part of or what are its parts? What is it a stage of or what are its stages? What is it a product of or what are its products?

Concepts and Vocabulary: Categories and Labels This is a step-by-step procedure: 1. Give students a list of the vocabulary words. 2. Read through the words so students hear how to pronounce them correctly. Have

3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

students say the words until they can pronounce them correctly. Allow students to ask questions about words and look them up, if they would like to, using reference books, the web, etc. Assign student groups. Ask students to discuss the words and figure out how they could group the words. Have students give each category they made a label. Have students justify their groups and labels.

Contextual Redefinition Give students a list of no more than 10 vocabulary words. Have the students make predictions about what they think the words might mean. After predictions are made, give the students the words again in context. Have the students write down what they think the words mean and then have them write which context clues they used to figure out the meaning of the words. Dictoglos Teacher reads a short piece of text twice and students note words or phrases that are unfamiliar to them. Students share their lists in pairs or small groups. Students then have to try to recreate the text based on their lists of words and phrases. Teacher then provides the students with the original text for them to compare with the text they created. Focused Cloze Teacher gives the students a short passage of text with key words and concepts left as blanks. Teacher provides students a word bank. Students must read through the text and figure out where to put the words in the word bank. Frayer Model Teacher provides students with a box split into four quadrants. In one quadrant, students put the definition of the word; in another, students list examples of the term; in another quadrant, students list non-examples; and in the last quadrant, students put either synonyms or antonyms. Frequent Contact Teacher provides students with three categories and a list of word. Students work in small groups to figure out which categories the words should go in and if they could fit in multiple categories. Students defend the way they categorized their words. Im Thinking of a Word . . . Teacher picks a word from the unit and has students try to guess what it is. Teacher provides more clues such as antonyms for the word as the game progresses until students guess the word. I Spy: A Word Scavenger Hunt Students are given a list of vocabulary words and have to find examples of those words in the real world. Students can bring in artifacts, take pictures, etc. Lead Students are provided a list of words that relate to the topic. Students are given an experience activity such as a movie related to the topic. Students then discuss the relationship of the word to the experience activity. The example in the book was about King Arthur. The list included words like chivalry and heroic. Students watched a movie about King Arthur and then discussed where they saw examples of chivalry and people being heroic. List-Group-Label Teacher gives the students a concept and they have to generate a list of

words related to that concept (the example given in the book was war). Students then work in groups to categorize the words in their list. The final step is that students create labels for their categories of words. Possible Questions Teacher provides students with a list of vocabulary words (in the examples they are grouped into sets of three). Students use these word sets to generate possible questions that will be answered in the lesson/unit. Possible Sentences Teacher provides the students a list of vocabulary words. Teacher reads through the words with students to make sure they all know how to pronounce them. Students work in pairs or small groups to generate possible sentences they will read in the text using these words. As a whole class, list all the sentences they came up with. If any words havent been used, as a class generate a sentence or multiple sentences that use these words. As you go through the reading the actual text, mark the sentences the class came up with as true, false or unknown. Previewing Content Vocabulary This is strategy requires a graphic organizer with six parts. The first part is where the teacher provides the title of the unit or reading. In that section, the student is to write what words or phrases he might expect to read or learn about based on this title. In the next section, the teacher gives a list of actual content vocabulary words they will read in this unit or reading selection. The student takes these words and uses the last four parts of the graphic organizer to categorize the words. The categories are as follows: Ive never heard the word before; Ive heard the word, but I dont know what it means; I think the word means or is related to; and I know the word. Semantic Feature Analysis - Teacher provides a list of vocabulary words that share some similar characteristics and creates a grid for students to use. On the grid, the teacher arranges the items to be analyzed across the top (horizontally) and the characteristics to be examined down the side (vertically). As an example, the teacher might put different types of rulers across the top such as monarch, tsar, president, dictator, etc. Along the side, the teacher might have terms like elected, tyrant, full power, royalty, etc. The students put a + when the item definitely does have that characteristic, a if the item definitely does not have that characteristic, and a 0 if its unknown or debatable as to whether the item has that characteristic. Semantic Mapping This is basically another word for a concept web or spider outline. The teacher or student starts with a term in the middle and draws lines and bubbles from there of related terms. Survival of the Fittest This is like the Sesame Street clip where they gave four things and asked/sang about which one was not like the others. Teacher gives students lists of vocabulary words grouped into sets of four or five. For each set, the students have to figure out which word does not belong and be able to defend why it does not belong. Think-Pair-Share: Collaborate for Understanding Teacher reads a passage and has students think about and/or write about what they think the term(s) mean individually. Students then pair

up to share their definitions. Then the whole class discusses the different ideas students had and comes to a consensus on what the definition(s) should be. Vocab-O-Gram This one is only meant for reading a story. Basically it has the students use a graphic organizer to put the vocabulary words in the part of the story where they should appear. It also has a place for Mystery Words, which are ones the student does not know. Here is the example from the book:

Word Sorts This would be done before the lesson or unit. Students get the list of words, discuss them and put them into categories. Teacher can also provide categories ahead of time.

Word Walls Teacher and students create posters of words for multiple reasons. Some could be because they are frequently used words in the texts they are reading, some are based on topics, some are based on helping students be more descriptive by providing them with some descriptive terms, etc.