MAVA: Montgomery Assessment of Vocabulary Acquisition

This assessment is for children aged 3 years, 0 months to 12 years, 11 months. The MAVA was designed to measure the development of childrens oral language by assessing listening, and speaking vocabulary. First because oral language precedes reading and writing, it serves as an excellent predictor of literacy skills. Second, the assessment informs teachers and specialists of the words or concepts that require extra attention in the classroom. Finally, the test guides special educators and parents toward appropriate intervention plans and IEP goals (Montgomery, 2008, p. 3). Its scope is expressive (speaking) and receptive (listening) vocabulary. The vocabulary words in the assessment fall into three tiers: Tier 1 Words:

Basic, high frequency words Nouns, verbs, adjectives Includes early reading words Examples: book, girl, sad, run, dog, and orange (Hutton, 2008) High frequency words across all domains Words with multiple meanings Tier 2 words are the most important words for direct instruction because they are good indicators of a students progress through school (Hutton, 2008). Examples: masterpiece, fortunate, industrious, measure, and benevolent (Hutton, 2008) Related to specific domains Subject area words Hobbies, technology, weather, professions Low frequency Examples: economics, isotope, asphalt, Revolutionary War, and crepe (Hutton, 2008)

Tier 2 Words:

Tier 3 Words:

Nicks completion of the MAVA: Nick was 6 years and 1 month of age when test was administered. He completed in the school library where it was quiet and the distractions were limited. Nick has an easy temperament and was very responsive during the assessment. He seemed to enjoy the assessment- smiled after he would answer the questions and would say things like, Im smart arent I? Scoring was easy, however Nick was very curious about what was being written down on the clipboard--he kept trying to see my clipboard when I was marking down his answers and he would ask, Did I get that right? after a lot of questions. I kept telling him he is doing great! I did the first part of the assessment, then took him back to class for snack, and then after snack, we went back and did

the second part. Next time I administer this assessment, I will do it all in one sitting so it is more accurate!!! Scores received: RECEPTIVE: Raw score: Standard Score: Confidence Interval: Percentile: Age Equivalent: EXPRESSIVE: Raw score: Standard Score: Confidence Interval: Percentile: Age Equivalent:

128 125 119-131 95 9;0

97 109 103-115 73 7;6

For receptive, he scored +1.5 standard deviations above the mean! For expressive, he scored roughly +.75 standard deviations above the mean! Response Analyzer I plugged in his incorrect answers into the response analyzer and this is the data I received:

Receptive vocabulary: Nick understands 100% of the words in Tier 1, 72% of the words in Tier 2, and 46% of the words in Tier 3 Expressive vocabulary: Nick understands 100% of the words in Tier 1, 50% of the words in Tier 2, and 9% of the words in Tier 3

Recommendations for facilitating Nicks learning: His Tier 1 words (early reading words, sight words, nouns, verbs, and adjectives) are very much used and understood. His Tier 2 words that play a large role in speaking and reading vocabulary need a little bit of work. Tier 2 words are the most important ones to directly teach to students because they are assumed to be known as students progress through school (Super Duper Publications, 2014). Examples of Tier 2 words include masterpiece, preference, fortuitous, glean, and measure and there are about 7,000 word families in English in Tier 2 (Super Duper Publications, 2014). Nick only knows a small percentage of expressive Tier 3 words, however he is above average and has the expressive vocabulary knowledge of a 7 and 6 months year old. The teacher should still attempt to enhance his vocabulary and begin to use bigger words with this student. Examples of Tier 3 words include things like ukulele, asphalt, genome, crepe, and cornice and they comprise the remaining 400,000 words in the US language fall in this tier.

Works Cited: Montgomery, J. K. (2008). MAVA: Montgomery assessment of vocabulary acquisition: Examiners manual. Greenville, South Carolina: Super Duper Publications. T.Hutton. (2008). Three tiers of vocabulary and education. [Blog comment]. Retrieved from http://blog.discoveryeducation.com/wpcontent/blogs.dir/1/files/2012/02/182_Vocabulary Tiers.pdf Super Duper Publications. (2014). Response Analyzers. Retrieved from http://www.superduperinc.com/Analyzer/Default.aspx