Vocabulary Workouts for AWL

Hello friends, I have developed what I call "Vocabulary Workouts" for the first 60 words on the Academic Word List, and I would be pleased to share these with you. There is also a brief teacher's guide suggesting ways to use the workouts. I have been teaching one word per class, drawn from the materials we are reading, with students this fall and have found the workouts to be quite useful. With the emphasis on college and career readiness, it's clear that we need to be teaching and assessing academic vocabulary explicitly and structuring opportunities for students to use these words in speaking and writing in meaningful ways.

I'm copying an example of one workout below. If you would like to receive a copy of these Vocabulary Workouts, please send me a private message at susanfinn_miller@iu13.org, and I will be glad to send them to you.

You can consider this a holiday gift from me!

Vocabulary Workout "distribute"

Cheers, Susan

Moderator, Assessment CoP

Comments

Wow, Susan!

This is incredibly generous and useful. I like your activities very much, particularly the conversation practice, which could be very useful in tying the wirtten language to oral language while allowing all students to practice the vocabulary  - maximizing time for student interaction.

I have found that, in focusing on vocabulary in instruction, when asking students to indicate words they don't understand or want to discuss in a reading, for example, they will select words that show relationships between ideas, words, phrases, and sentences in a reading, words such as  "although," and "however" at a basic level, or," nonetheless," or "notwithstanding"  at a high level. (the last two are in academic list number 10.). These  words are really hard to unpack and may not always lend themselves to activites that work so well for verbs and nouns that carry specific meaning in and of themselves.
How can instructors get students to practice and use these words that show relationships? Thoughts anyone?

Miriam Burt, SME, Adult ELL

 

 

 

 

 

Hi Miriam and all, Thanks for your comments and for posing such a relevant question, Miriam. I've heard these relationship words (as well as other academic words) called mortar words, i.e., without the mortar, the bricks cannot hold together!

One way to support students to acquire these essential words is to provide them with sentence frames for conversations. For example, if we want students to compare and contrast two things or ideas, we could provide a sentence frame such as: "The two differ because the one ...; however, the other ..." or "The first idea is useful because ....; nevertheless, the second idea has benefits, too, because ..."

Those who are interested may want to check out Jeff Zwiers' Constructive Conversation Skills Poster. This tool offers prompts and responses to support students to "create, clarify, fortify and negotiate" during "constructive conversations" in class.  Zwiers has a great many additional fantastic resources on his website-- all K12, but entirely relevant when focused on the CCRS.

Cheers, Susan

Moderator, Assessment CoP

Thanks, Susan, for the term "mortar."  What a great, concrete (no pun intended) word.  Thanks, too, for the link to Jeff Zwiers' posters. Also written for K12, but I think relevant as they provide practice with CCR standards, are the SERP materials. The content is social studies, and one set of materials
addresses "complex questions related to American democracy"  http://wordgen.serpmedia.org/social-studies/. They include lots of vocabulary activities as well.

Miriam

SME, Adult ELL

Miriam and all, Thanks so much; Miriam, for mentioning the SERP Word Generation lesson plans and materials. I've been familiar with the Word Generation materials for some time, and I agree with you that -- although they are K12 -- these outstanding lesson plans and materials can readily be adapted to our context in adult literacy, particularly for learners who have academic goals. In addition to the social studies content, teachers can find science lessons as well as information about providing support for English learners.

Regarding the term "mortar," I want to be sure to give credit where credit is due. The concept of "bricks and mortar" comes from Dutro and Kinsella's excellent essay as cited:

Dutro, S., & Kinsella, K. (2010). English language development: Issues and implementation at grades six through twelve. In California Department of Education, Improving education forEnglish learners: Research-based approaches. (pp. 151-207). Sacramento, CA: California Department of Education.

Happy New Year!

Susan

Moderator,  Assessment CoP