transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:01] If you're enjoying Melissa & Lori Love Literacy, we'd love to keep learning with you.

Speaker 2:
[00:05] We offer keynotes, presentations, and live podcast style sessions, all focused on practical science of reading aligned strategies.

Speaker 1:
[00:13] To learn more, email us at literacypodcast at greatminds.org.

Speaker 2:
[00:21] Vocabulary instruction is essential for comprehension, and teachers want strategies that actually work in real classrooms, not just in theory.

Speaker 1:
[00:30] Today, we're joined by Tim Rasinski, Melissa Cheesman Smith, and Savannah Campbell, authors of The Megabook of Vocabulary to talk about practical classroom-ready ways to build students' vocabulary in your classroom. Hi, teacher friends. I'm Lori.

Speaker 2:
[00:47] And I'm Melissa.

Speaker 1:
[00:49] We are two educators who want the best for all kids, and we know you do too.

Speaker 2:
[00:55] We worked together in Baltimore when the district adopted a new literacy curriculum.

Speaker 1:
[01:00] We realized there was so much more to learn about how to teach reading and writing.

Speaker 2:
[01:05] Lori and I can't wait to keep learning with you today.

Speaker 1:
[01:11] Hi, Tim, Melissa and Savannah. Welcome to the podcast today. We're so excited that two of you are back. So Savannah and Tim, welcome back. And Melissa, welcome to the podcast for the first time.

Speaker 3:
[01:24] We're so excited to be here again.

Speaker 2:
[01:28] So we are just so excited about your book. I mean, it is chock full of vocabulary strategies. And whenever I think of vocabulary, I always think back to my high school days. We had those little books. Does anyone know those little vocabulary books? And it was just like, you know, we get those 10 words at the beginning of the week. I think we did like sentences we had to write and we had to do something every night with the words. Then we took a quiz on Friday and then all the words promptly like disappeared from my brain because the quiz was over. So that was clearly not a good way to teach vocabulary or to learn vocabulary. So I'm really, really excited to talk about the strategies that are in your book, The Megabook of Vocabulary. And before we get into, we're going to share so many strategies today. But before we get into them, I know we wanted to sort of ground everybody in the bigger picture. And in your book, you organized the vocabulary instruction around four core elements. So Savannah, can you briefly walk us through those elements and why each one is important?

Speaker 3:
[02:28] Yeah. So I think Melissa, what you were talking about is what most of us are very familiar with. And it's the only thing that we're familiar with, which would be quote unquote direct teaching of vocabulary words and how well they were actually directly taught is up for debate. But that is one component. But the book is organized around these four elements of vocabulary instruction. And we have this cute little acronym for WISE, and we have little owl graphics that go with it. They're very precious. But the first letter, the W, is for word consciousness. And I think word consciousness is honestly the hardest one because it is not easy to always plan for because word consciousness refers to a kid's or a human's ability to have an awareness of, a curiosity about, an appreciation of, and an enthusiasm for words. And so it's not something that is always so easy to directly plan for. But when you think of somebody who's word consciousness, the best example I can think is of the person when you're talking with them, and they always use elevated language. And you're like, oh, my husband, for example, we were talking about, he had said the word eskimo. And I was like, actually, we don't really use that term anymore. It's kind of a pejorative term. And he was like, what do you mean? I was like, it's like a negative thing. And he said, well, why wouldn't you just say it's negative? And I was like, I don't know, because the word pejorative is a better word for it. That's word consciousness. Word consciousness is that awareness of that appreciation of words in reading and writing. And then the second element is individual word learning. Once we enter formal schooling, we have to learn about 3,000 new words a year. And those cannot happen just from direct instruction, but direct instruction has to be a part of it, including things like student friendly definitions, giving students context, giving them multiple exposures. The third tool is or the third element is S, student tools for determining meaning. This one is so important because what it is is it's, can we help our children to learn words well enough when they're not with us, that comprehension isn't impacted. So, for example, context clues. Can we teach our students to look for context clues in a sentence so that they can understand an unfamiliar word? Same thing with morphology. Can we teach our students to look for meaningful word parts to unlock words? And then the last one would be reference materials as a last resort using things like a dictionary. And then the final of the four different elements of vocabulary instruction is explanation of word relationships. Synonyms, antonyms, homonyms, multiple meaning words, figurative language, helping our students connect to the new, to the known, and building off that schema for them. So those are the four elements, Melissa, Tim, was there anything else that you think I forgot for it? It is like the conceptual understanding of the book, so I wanted to make sure I did it justice.

Speaker 2:
[05:24] Melissa, can you talk a little bit about just, you know, generally how do we, everybody, students, us, how do we acquire language and grow our vocabulary? And how does that translate into those four elements that you all came up with?

Speaker 4:
[05:39] Not only students, but as Savannah mentioned earlier, just as humans, how we use vocabulary, we have to acquire language by the same way that we acquire any other skill that we have practiced. For example, if we are playing soccer, we practice soccer and drills and get better at it, we have to hear the same words over and over for students and humans to understand them first, receptively, and then eventually to be able to use them expressively. We've seen that there's four levels of ways that students understand a word. The first one is a shallow understanding. Maybe you've just heard the word, you recognize and at least you know how to pronounce it. Those are words that we model for students that they may not pick up within language with their peers or in their reading. Then once we understand a word and have heard it and been exposed to it a few more times, then it becomes more familiar to us so that when we see it, we understand it in context. Eventually, after the research shows between 10 and 12 exposures, then we move from a receptive to an expressive understanding of the word. That means that when it is applicable to something we're saying or communicating, and that we are able to use that in an appropriate way because we have the nuance of the word that we understand better in how to use it and exactly what we want to say. So we call that a nuanced understanding. Then the last step is a deep understanding of a word where you can apply it really to multiple situations and you really can use it receptively and expressively.

Speaker 2:
[07:14] I love this. We just talked to Madi McCowen and she talked about this ladder for vocabulary, and how you're often just somewhere on this ladder, instead of this feeling of like, do they know this word or do they not know this word? Check it off. It's like, yeah, they might be somewhere, they might have a little bit of familiarity, they might have a deeper familiarity, they're just somewhere on this ladder. And I like how you kind of had some categories to place on that ladder.

Speaker 4:
[07:39] Yes, it's really a continuum of how well do we understand a word, and that still happens. The word Savannah just used is now in my very low, shallow understanding of the word. And I'm going to look it up and use it again sometime and see if I can jump to expressive quickly.

Speaker 1:
[07:57] That's exactly what I was going to say, Melissa. Well, first of all, we're talking vocabulary in terms of a ladder, we're talking vocabulary in terms of a pool or a lake, right? We have this shallow understanding, now we can go deeper. So I love all these visuals, but exactly that word, Savannah, I can't even say the word because it just was in my very shallow receptive, shallow end of the pool. But that word now, I can be more aware of it. I've heard it. I need to hear it again. I need to hear it again. And then I need to write it down because I need to see it for sure. But what I'm really taking away is vocabulary instruction is, it's not just one thing we do. It is many, many things. There's layers. This is very integrated. We're building word awareness. We're teaching words in meaningful ways. We're giving students tools. We're helping them with our tool box, right? Like our set of tools and our toolbox to connect words to one another. So I'm excited. As I said before, I want to get practical. I want to talk about the strategies in the book that really bring all of these things to life in the classroom for teachers. So if we could kind of start with word consciousness in the book, you mentioned that strategies in this section, this word consciousness section, are about helping students notice and care about words. So important. If they don't learn and care about words and care about learning words, right? They're not going to keep learning words. So we want them to have that hunger for learning words. So I'm going to ask Savannah, can you share one example that teachers could try right away with word consciousness?

Speaker 3:
[09:41] Yeah. So I'm going to talk about a strategy from the book called Weekly Word Quest. And I don't know if it's all the strategies, but I know at least several of the strategies that we're talking about today. We are actually going to have like a little packet for everyone that we can include in the show notes. So you can actually see what this would look like in the book. And the one that I want to talk about is Weekly Word Quest. And it's actually something that we did at my school for years. And the whole point of it is to get an entire school excited about words. And so what I did was every Wednesday we had a question and it could be something like find a word with a prefix that means not. And they would have to go around and look for answers. Well, where are the answers going to be? All the teachers have a name tag and on the name tag is a word. So we just did it Wednesday because Wordy Wednesday is a literative. But you can do a weekly word quest on any day of the week except for Monday because ain't nobody wanted to do it on a Monday. So you get your name tag with your answer on it. So say the weekly word quest question was find a word with a prefix meaning not. And I had a word that is like impossible, right? Mine would be a correct one. But then you might have somebody who has a word like inside, and it could have a different meaning. So you have everyone has an answer and some of the answers are correct, some of them are incorrect, and then everybody in the school gets involved in looking for correct answers. I did one for morphology, it could be a question as simple as find compound words. You could do something like, I live in Virginia and we have the SOL, so I had always tried to make it standards-based. So it would be like, find a word that has the same vowel sound as play, and then they would have to go around and everybody would have to find a long a word. So weekly word quest is just the opportunity for every child in a school to look at words every single week. And even if the question is too hard for the littles, what our teachers would do is go around and they'd be like, all right, we learned about the digraph CH. We're going to go around the school and we're going to see if we can find the digraph CH and some of these answer choices. So everybody got to have a hand in it and it was amazing for years.

Speaker 1:
[11:57] That was so much fun. So teachers could kind of lead that for the little ones, if needed, and do some thinking a lot around that. So we're still getting that initial exposure. That's really fun. What a fun way to rally. You mean your entire school. If let's say the whole school is like, there's a teacher listening right now and they're like, okay, I know my, you know, maybe my school's not ready for this right this moment. You know, grab your grade level team. You could do it in a grade level team. You know, like let's rally around this. Or, you know, maybe there's just, you know, Melissa, I know in Baltimore we had like some schools were just like one grade per or one class per grade. Grab your little primary team, great, and make it fun within. So I love this idea is thinking outside of the box. Such a fun thing. Awesome. There's not enough fun things to say about that. So I kind of want to go into another strategy because we're just going to like load everybody up listening with all of these fun ways to play with words today. Melissa, can you tell us a little bit about Word Wars and how that helps build students word awareness?

Speaker 4:
[13:00] Thank you. We also are going to put copies of a lot of the materials in the show notes so that teachers that hear about this and like one of these strategies can have access to those.

Speaker 1:
[13:12] So everybody doesn't have to take a ton of notes while they're listening. They can just relax and then use the packet for some additional support after.

Speaker 4:
[13:20] So one of Word Wars is about kids learning how to debate. One of the things that makes kids nervous about debating is I don't know what I'm going to say. When we're teaching vocabulary, if we're just asking students to do something with words they already know and already have in their expressive vocabulary, they're not increasing their vocabulary. So one of the things that we have in the book all throughout is with each strategy, we provide words a lot of the time so that kids are exposed to new words and teachers have the opportunity to see words right there, ready to go with the strategy. You're not always having to come up with your own. So in Word Wars, students would get into partners and debate a topic. So to aid them in using vocabulary, we do two things. We have a sheet that has all these different ways that you can start a debate, like this directly connects to the idea that, or to summarize, one can see that. It teaches kids, this is what good language sounds like, that this is what it's not just I think that, and we have to model that for kids. So these students in the older grades would have something to start each of their sentences that they can use, or eventually bounce off, and then when they talk about certain topics, we give them the words to use for those topics because we want them using higher level vocabulary than maybe they would be comfortable with. Maybe they only know a word receptively and not expressively. For example, if we say school should start early or late, that's the debate topic, and we give them words like productivity and efficiency and organization, and we ask them in this, you got to integrate these words in there. We have pulled them from that receptive vocabulary to expressive quickly. They've practiced the word a few times, they've gotten those exposures, and then they're able to use that. Just like with word wars where they're debating topics, all the strategies will have a lot of vocabulary to use, not something you have to come up with on your own.

Speaker 2:
[15:24] And kids do really like to debate things, especially like that kind of, I like when you're talking about something that they're comfortable with, or maybe something they're learning about in class that they have some knowledge about, right, and then you can add this layer of some vocabulary onto it. That's really nice to kind of give them those extra words there. But the whole, like all these word consciousness ideas that you've brought up, there's, I mean, a ton more in the book, not to just plug the book, but there are a ton. You know, they're not like a separate lesson. It's not like you're like, here's my vocabulary time. I'm teaching certain words. They're just kind of like built in, or you have to find the time to kind of weave them into your day where they kind of make sense, or they would help and boost students to be able to do whatever they're doing. So I love that. That's like one way to think about it. But we're going to move to the next element, which is a little more structured, I would say, or intentional, which is this individual word learning. So Melissa, can you share a strategy here about teaching specific words in a deep and meaningful way? Not the way I learned them in the book.

Speaker 4:
[16:38] There are some keys for teachers to use that when we are exposing kids to new words, and they have to learn about 3,000 a year. So just doing those weekly word lists, you'll never have enough to do. So we have to be very intentional about how we pick words. But we know that there's 3 specific things that will help them cement this to become expressive. And the first one is having a student-friendly definition. And they have to have something where the words in the definition they already know, they can understand, and it's easy to receptively take in the meaning of that word. So, number one, a student-friendly definition. Number two, contextual examples. So, examples right in context that are real and meaningful. And the third element is having multiple exposures to the word, where they don't hear a word just once, because we know that doesn't work. We have to have students exposed to that several times. A couple of the fun strategies we have, one's called My Character Traits. And it's a list of a bunch of different character traits that anybody could or could not have. For example, moody or resilient. And we give a student-friendly definition. And then the kids get to either rate themselves, how moody am I on a scale from 0 to 10? And when we make them think about the word moody or resilient or pragmatic or skeptical in a way that they have to apply it to themselves, it's not only increasing their exposures, but giving them a lot of context and helping cement that into something that's meaningful for them. So we can have kids rate themselves and then rate a friend, rate their mom and dad or a parent on that. So that's one of the strategies that we have where we want kids to have to read and think about the word and apply it to something in real life. Another one of the fun strategies that we have is called describe the scene. And in Chapter 2, it's packed full of so many fun activities that have visuals with them. And this is something that we really got a good support on from Scholastic, where we know that to understand words, sometimes we have to see something that applies to it and it sticks in our brain for kids that whose visual having a visual helps. So we have a strategy like describe the scene where we give the kids a scene and we give the kids a word. For example, it could be a beach scene where we have the word tranquil or serenity or rippling. And then they have to write a paragraph to describe the scene. Now you could do this where you don't have the words given and you just give the kids a picture and say describe the beach. Well kids will just use words that they already know and are comfortable with expressively. And that's really the purpose of this. We want to give kids words so that they have to use those in a new writing or a new communication so that they're jumping to that expressive use of the words. So we have lots of fun strategies with characters and settings and things where teachers will have the words available and the visuals available to use.

Speaker 2:
[19:38] Melissa, I have a question about, I want to go back to the first one that my character traits. Is that what it was that what it's called? So with your example with Moody, I'm just curious like, where would that word come from? Like if I was a teacher and you know, I'm not just pulling Moody out of the air, right? I'm just trying to figure out like, how could I situate this with the teacher to figure out, when would I use that? You know, like where would the word Moody come from? That I would want to then use the strategy the way you described it?

Speaker 4:
[20:08] Well, we think about words that kids probably have heard maybe in literature or just in everyday speech and conversation with a friend or with a parent. But we want words that where it's going to be a high utility word, that they're going to run into this word again. They're going to either encounter it where they hear it or it might come up in their language. Like the word moody for kids that are in fourth and fifth grade, that's a great word for them to learn because it's something that they might be feeling as they're that age. But it also might be something where in their writing they might use that. If the word is way, way, way too hard and they aren't going to encounter it again in the future, those words aren't always worth using. So that's why it's kind of you think of those Isabelle Beck's tier words that we want to expose them to those tier two and tier three words. But we stay a lot in that tier two where it's their academic words that are high utility, that kids will run into again, either receptively or expressively.

Speaker 2:
[21:08] Yeah, that's what I was thinking too. Like you want it to be this word that's meaningful if you're going to spend time with it, not just like, I pulled it out of a list somewhere. You want it to be something meaningful. Then your second one was about using visuals. I know Savannah, you had another strategy for this part that was about, I think it also includes visuals based on the name of it. So can you share a little bit about that one?

Speaker 3:
[21:32] Yeah. So one of the strategies that we have is called picture-powered vocabulary. I really love this one because it can be great for a reading classroom, but it can also be great for a content area classroom. So what you're going to do is if you have an upcoming unit, upcoming concept. So I know some core reading programs have units like Bravery or Economics or Habitats, and what you're going to want to do is basically we're going to be front-loading vocabulary. So when children are entering into this new concept, chances are they don't have a lot of the background knowledge, they don't have a lot of the vocabulary about the topic. We know that once decoding is no longer a factor, it's background knowledge and vocabulary that determine how well children are going to understand a text. So if we can front-load some of this, that is going to help our students immensely no matter the subject. So with picture-powered vocabulary, whatever your topic is, let's say economics, because that's one that we have in the book. You get a picture and it will have people doing things or it will have, if it was habitats, it would have a habitat. But what you're going to do is you are going to get your students to start talking about the picture. So one of the ones that we have in the book, like I said, is about economics and it's people at a farmer's market. It asks questions like, well, how are these people getting what they want and need? How is a farmer's market different from a grocery store? How are these people paying for their purchases? So what you're doing is you're using visuals and you're using really guided questions to help the students acquire some of this vocabulary, that initial introduction to vocabulary that's going to come up in the unit. We have several of them in the book, but you can also just choose an image that will work for whatever the topic is that you're about to enter and think of some really powerful questions that you could ask your students to get them thinking about the things that will be coming up in that unit.

Speaker 1:
[23:28] Yeah, this is really fun Savannah. I'm glad you brought this up. I want to just talk about a nuance in here that Melissa, Tim, Savannah, any of you can chime in here. But I want to talk about the difference between, because I think what you're talking about here is not this. So you're talking about helping students think through this new concept, this new, that includes vocabulary, because we know that's important, this knowledge of whatever picture they're looking at. We're having that discussion, we're helping them get the words into their expressive language. Maybe we're just doing a think aloud and maybe it's just receptive for our littles. Who knows? But I think this is different than pre-teaching every vocabulary word that they're going to see or encounter in whatever they're about to read. So I'm hoping we can just have a little sidebar conversation about that, because I think that's not the most efficient way to do it. But what you're talking about is really giving them a schema here for what they're about to step into, which does level the playing field for every student, right?

Speaker 3:
[24:36] Yeah. So it is not just a list of words that we're hoping by the end of the unit, they're going to know all of them. But it is about tapping into that conceptual understanding, that schema of the topic that's coming about. And we know that it can be exceptionally difficult to create a mental model, especially if you are a struggling reader. So when you introduce the picture, you are also introducing the vocabulary by like just giving them an image of what's coming up. But yeah, I'd be curious to see what, if Melissa or Tim have anything to add to that.

Speaker 4:
[25:05] I was just going to add though, it's such a, that strategy is such a good testament to what really helps kids comprehend because we know that those two biggest comprehenders for kids to be successful with comprehension are background knowledge and vocabulary. And so many of these strategies integrate both of those. So it's built in for them when vocabulary is just comprehension on a really small word level. And so when we have those two things together in a strategy like this, it really sets the kids up for integrating that word right into the content that they're going to be using it.

Speaker 3:
[25:42] I just have to repeat what you said because I loved it so much. Vocabulary is just comprehension at the word level. That's a big thing.

Speaker 2:
[25:52] Yeah. And I love what you all are saying about this because I mean, you could have probably 20 words that you want them to know about the economy by the time they're done. But if you do all of that at the beginning, it's too much, they're going to be overloaded. But if you spend some time just on that word economy and really help them to understand that, then as you get into it, all those other words will click and stick a lot better than if you tried to just do all of them at the beginning.

Speaker 3:
[26:22] And remember too, we talked about multiple exposures. So this is just the first exposure. We're just talking about it in the beginning here, but we're going to do it again and again and again, especially if it is a word that I expect to take to that deep understanding by the end of the unit.

Speaker 1:
[26:37] Okay, so Savannah, as we are, you know, let's like think about we're giving students that shallow understanding, but we know they're going to encounter it in the text and students might need some tools to get that meaning on their own as they're in the text. So if we could talk a little bit about context clues and how we teach students to use them effectively, and especially in the early grades, I want to make sure we touch on that. Could you share more Savannah?

Speaker 3:
[27:05] Yeah. So when it comes to context clues, I just want to reiterate what I said at the beginning is the whole point of this is to teach students a strategy that they can utilize when they are no longer with you. This is intended to help students to uncover the meaning of a word well enough that they can keep on reading. And I think it's also important to note that context clues is not the same thing as requeuing systems, right? Yes, we are asking students to look around in a word, but we're asking students or in a sentence, we're asking them to look around in a sentence to uncover meaning, not to help them decode. So I just think that that's an important distinction to make. But we have a strategy and it's called context clues for early learners, what's my word? And what it's intended to do is it's intended to give our earliest learners that initial exposure to context clues. And it's nothing that is like ground breaking. But what it is, is it's going deep into it and giving the work. So it's looking at a sentence and we have a bunch of sentences, I think we have like 20 of them in there that are designed for the early grades for this one. And having a targeted word and showing them how they can look around in a sentence to pull out clues. Like I said, it's nothing fancy, but it's very powerful and you can do it orally with your students, you can do it in a whole group on an anchor chart. But just giving students that initial exposure to looking around when the meaning of a word is not clear.

Speaker 2:
[28:35] Savannah, can I ask you a quick follow up question for that? Because I think when I was teaching, we went a little overboard with context clues, honestly. And it was like, I felt like my kids were, they always expected there to be a context clue. And there isn't always, right? Is there any like framing in there around like telling kids that it's a tool, right? You can look for those context clues, but sometimes it's a really clear one. And sometimes it's, you've got to put a lot of things together. And sometimes there's not much of anything.

Speaker 1:
[29:07] And sometimes the clue is like maybe three sentences back or three sentences forward. Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[29:13] And it's not so straightforward, right? Because these are the things that we're hoping that they're going to do when they're no longer with us. But we teach the context clues because when they, when we teach context clues, what we're teaching is to look for information that's already in front of them. The other tools that we're going to look at, morphology and reference materials. Morphology, you have to bring the knowledge to the table. And a reference material dictionary is a whole another thing. So context clues is honestly kind of the first one. Like can you look, it's what we do as readers, right? Like if we come across a word we don't know, we go back and we reread that paragraph to just say, oh, okay, well, I think it means this. And that's what we're hoping to do for our students.

Speaker 5:
[29:53] Yeah, I'm going to just chime in here and just mention that, yeah, everybody thought I was just window dressing up to this point here. But, you know, that's the whole point of the book here. There is not just one way to teach vocabulary. We want to give teachers, you know, a full range of tools to use and of course kids as well. And so if one is not as helpful as others, then you have others that you can rely on. Unlike what you mentioned, Melissa, the list of words, I have to admit when I taught school, I did that and I knew something wasn't right there. But, you know, at that point, I didn't know what else to use. But now we do.

Speaker 1:
[30:32] Yeah. And Tim, I would love to just kind of keep going on this track, right? Like context schools, we're looking outside the word. And when we actually do have a word in front of us, right? Like we can use the word so we can look inside the word, look at the word, break it apart, have some fun with it. So Tim, can you talk a little bit about, I think we're going to call it Generative Vocabulary and Morphology and how that gives students like those inside the word strategies?

Speaker 5:
[30:58] Sure. I'd love to do more than just talk a little bit about it, but you can talk a lot of it about it to an hour or so. But yeah, you know, when we think about morphology, it's become a popular term in just in the last few years. And most often we think about prefixes and suffixes, those elements of a word that have meaning. There's so much more to it that we can apply in our instruction. Think about base words and word roots. That's where so much potential is there for improving our students' vocabulary. The idea is that if you learn your notion of generative, if you learn one word root, you can learn lots and lots of words in English. I'll give you a quick example. I was just thinking about this this morning. The Latin word root tract, T-R-A-C-T, means to drag or to pull. Okay. Well, if you know that then, when your muscles contract, what happens? They pull together. When you break your leg skiing and they put you in traction, what's that happening? They're pulling your bones back together, so hopefully they'll heal. Politicians often make retractions. They're pulling back what they said last night. My wife and I were in a protracted argument the other day. It just dragged on and on and on. You know, here we're in the snowy weather time of year. You got to make sure your tires have good traction on them so that they have that drag. They keep you on the road. And of course, I'm going to the dentist next week, and I hope I don't have to get an extraction, get that tooth pulled on. Do you know there are over 100 English words that have that connection to track or track? And that's the batting average I like to share with teachers, that you learn one root, you can learn lots and lots and lots of words in English. And just to add on a little bit to this, we were talking about the various tiers of words, how tier two and tier three words are so important because they're not words that kids may not normally learn on their own. Well, most of our academic words in English, the words that show up in science, social studies and mathematics, most of them are derived from Latin and Greek word roots. So it's not just improving students reading in literature, but across the content areas as well. So there's so much potential there. But the problem is that generally speaking, we have not really addressed it fully as a profession, but we've done it in our book. So there you go.

Speaker 1:
[33:32] Oh my gosh. That is over 100 just for that one baser root.

Speaker 5:
[33:37] I'm not being pejorative, by the way.

Speaker 1:
[33:41] See, that's in your expressive.

Speaker 5:
[33:42] There you go. Yeah. Thanks Savannah.

Speaker 1:
[33:46] I appreciate it. Oh my gosh. Okay. So I think my next question truly is, if there's all of this morphology stuff I'm supposed to teach as a teacher, let's say my curriculum doesn't have anything in it around a scope and sequence or any... How am I supposed to know when I'm supposed to teach this stuff? I know your book has a great solution here. So I'm going to turn it over to Savannah to tell us because we came across it on page 180, and it's super awesome.

Speaker 3:
[34:17] Yeah. So we always talk about a phonic scope and sequence, and everyone always wants a morphology one. But I think what is a little bit tricky with morphology is that, it's not as straightforward like literally as phonics. Like I'm not going to teach my littles R-controlled vowels before I teach them digraphs. It's just not what we do. But when it comes to morphology, we're not bound so rigidly. We have some sort of guidelines that we can take. So for example, Anglo-Saxon prefixes and suffixes are the easiest, they're the most transparent. Anglo-Saxon tends to be attached to free morphemes, which means that like you add it to a word that can stand on its own. So it's very obvious. Hopeful is I am full of hope. So we tend to start with Anglo-Saxon. Then we move into Latin and about half of our language is derived from Latin. So that is going to be the largest component of your instruction. And Latin is built around prefixes, suffixes, and roots. They're going to be multi-syllabic words. And then the hardest one tends to be Greek. And Greek is something that I personally don't even touch until at least fifth grade. They are also very content-specific a lot of the times. Think of things like aqua, hydro, hyper, those things. And so with the scope and sequence that we have put together, we have it according to grade level bands like K1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8. But know that it's a general progression and it is not something that has to be followed so lockstep like you do with phonics. So I don't know, Tim, if you want to add on to that. Anything I didn't get.

Speaker 5:
[35:57] I got to click my mute button here. Now, again, you nailed it, Savannah. But I'm going to add one other thing that I like to do is think about word roots in terms of connecting them to times of the year. I've had a lot of fun with this. For example, Valentine's Day was a few weeks ago. The word root I worked with was the P-H-I-L-phil-or-phile, which means love. Of course, we can derive from that, explore other words than like anglophiles, people who love things, English francophiles, philosophers, love wisdom, and so on. You can find ways throughout the year to make those connections for students. It just makes it a little bit more tangible, I guess. By the way, the word tangible is a Greek root. We won't go there. We're going to run out of time. But the whole idea of all of this is to make word learning fun. Whenever we can make those connections to the time of year or perhaps a particular holiday, we're making it even more tangible for our students, touchable.

Speaker 1:
[37:09] Yeah. I mean, such a great connection that really resonates as a classroom teacher to pull in those holidays or those special days that you can add your word learning to that. I'm wondering about, I love a scope and sequence. I think it's always really helpful to have direction. I appreciate that. But I'm wondering too, if we're in a text, let's just say I'm a first-grade teacher and I'm reading out a book and I come across a T-R-A-C-T, and I'm just making this up because I don't have your scope and sequence memorized. But let's just pretend you're supposed to teach that down the road at grades 203 or whatever. Can I still teach it in that moment in first grade when it's further down the scope and sequence? I would bet yes. But I want to hear from you all. What do you think? Is that a teachable moment? Can we pull them out of the texts that we're reading and learning about?

Speaker 5:
[38:05] Well, I'll add my two cents very quickly. And the answer is yes, that teachable moment. You know, I like to think of these word roots as patterns, combinations of letters and sounds that reflect meaning. And one of the things we know from neuroscience is that our brains are pattern detectors. So let's take advantage of that. Now, the kids may not get it early on, but what I'd like to say is we're priming the pump so that when they come to practice again two or three years later, they've got that background already established. Melissa, I'm sorry I interrupted you there.

Speaker 4:
[38:42] No, it was okay. I think that was a perfect lead up to what I was going to say that just like we talked about multiple exposures with words, having those multiple exposures with something like just even a root or a base word. So that even if it's something that off the cuff, we just mention quickly that when you see Phil, it means love. Even just that, that gives them that one exposure. So the second time they hear it, now they have something to connect it to. So even if it's something quick and it's right within the lesson or the context of a book that is being read to the kids or that they're reading, is we have to always take advantage of those teachable moments.

Speaker 3:
[39:18] I actually have a really good example of actually doing this. So I've been subbing a lot and I was subbing in a math classroom, and they were decomposing fractions or numbers or something like that. And she put the word decompose on it. And she was talking about it and I was like, I can actually help here. I know what all those word parts mean. And decompose, so compose means to put together. So if you were decomposing, it's the opposite. You are taking it apart. So in that moment, we were able to explain the etymological root of the word and then connect it to the work that they were doing in the classroom. Are they going to remember it forever?

Speaker 1:
[39:54] No.

Speaker 3:
[39:55] But like Melissa said, we are giving them that first exposure to those morphemes.

Speaker 1:
[40:01] Yeah. So we're already in the pool, the lake, we're in the shallow end. We've heard it maybe a couple of times. Maybe we've said it with you Savannah, decompose, maybe at the whole class say it. So we're in the water with you rather than still being on the shore. We don't want to leave students on the shore or on the side of the pool. We want to get them in the water with us, with a really good instructor who's going to help them get to the deep end and swim. And learn to decompose and be able to use it expressively, right? So I love that. I think that's really, really helpful. And thank you for allowing me to ask that unscripted question.

Speaker 2:
[40:38] Yeah. And I love what you all are saying about just vocabulary has to be more flexible than like you said with, you know, teaching phonics. You can have a really clear scope and sequence there. But here it's like, I mean, if it's coming up, yes, take advantage of it. Teach it. If that word is there, if they're asking questions, if they're curious, yes, take advantage of it. I love that, like, it's harder, I think, as a teacher to be able to, like, get those moments to happen because you can't plan for every single one. But it's so powerful when you can. And I also really, I just want to stamp this too. I want to say these tools that you all are talking about, I think often in education, we say things like, well, morphology is so powerful. So like, that's the tool we should be using or like, well, context clues, there's not always a context clue. So don't use that tool. I just want to, I love the way you all said that of like, we give them a bunch of tools so they know if this doesn't work, that could work, right? Like use all the tools that you have in your toolbox and not just one. Wait, we don't want to just bank on one. We have to give them all of them that can work. So I just really love all of that, that you all are saying.

Speaker 3:
[41:41] Can I say one last thing because that, that just made me think about it. The reason these tools are so important is because we know that the largest contributor to a student's vocabulary development over time is actually wide reading. So yes, the explicit word instruction is important. Yes, all of it is important. But if we don't give them tools to do things when they're not with us, then they're never going to be able to reach that, what is it, 50,000 words by the end of high school that they need to know.

Speaker 2:
[42:08] Yeah, such a powerful point. Absolutely. Then I want to shift into our last element, which is about word relationships and how seeing those connections between words can really be helpful. I think we've already talked about it a little bit somehow in here, because we talked about it can stick a little bit better if you know other words that are similar to that word. So let's talk about some strategies for that one, and Savannah, we'll start with you to share one of your favorite strategies here.

Speaker 3:
[42:37] So this one's called category connections, and this one is actually great for like if you have like five minutes before you'll have to go somewhere. Basically, it's an oral vocabulary strategy. We don't always really get into oral vocabulary, I think as much as we should, having students have really purposeful oral language tasks. So what we're having them do is we're asking them to make connections between categories and words within those categories. So all you're going to do is give them a category like things that are cold. Then what I like to do is I like to go around in a circle, and everyone says a word that would go in that category. And if you can't think of a word or if you repeat a word, somebody already said, you're out. And then the last person or if it gets, I did this with a class and I think we got through like five rounds, and there were five kids left. And I was like, I guess all five of you are vocabulary masters today. But in the book, there's lots of different categories. You can do this with colors, you can do this with animals, you can do this with hot things, you can do this with a content area task. But you're just giving them a category and you're making their brains think about all the things that they know in relation to that category. And it's a lot of fun. It really is.

Speaker 2:
[43:49] I was going to say this is just like a nerdy word game that I would love to play.

Speaker 1:
[43:53] I know. I was thinking, can we play it right now? But we don't have all the time in the world. I'd be happy to. But it's like family feud. It's...

Speaker 2:
[44:03] Yeah. I have to... So quick little story. We used to play a game like this, honestly, in the pool in the summer. I don't even know exactly how, but it was like someone would say a category and then everyone would have to like swim to the other side. Did you play it, Lori?

Speaker 1:
[44:14] Totally. I played it. Did you guys play this?

Speaker 2:
[44:17] I was like, maybe we made it up. No, but it was this category. It was word categories, but we played it in the pool. Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[44:24] Nerdy word games. Now you all know fun, nerdy things about me and Melissa and our East Coast upbringings.

Speaker 2:
[44:32] All right. And Tim, you have one for us too for word connections. And you're known for your ladders, all kinds of ladders, fluency ladders, word ladders. So let's talk about word ladders and how that can help with the same idea of word relationships.

Speaker 5:
[44:46] Okay. Yeah. Thanks for that question, Melissa. And first of all, I'm going to give a shout out to my Melissa, Melissa's Cheesman Smith. We've actually collaborated on these word ladders for a number of years now and had several books out on them. But a word ladder basically, some people call them word chains or word building activities. The idea is that students start with a word and they go from one word to the next by adding, subtracting, changing letters as they go. And basically we think of that, Isabel Beck talked about that as a phonics activity and indeed it is. But what Melissa and I have done is to make it more of a vocabulary. You see when we go from one word to the next, not only do we say change a letter, but we also say change a letter to make a word that means blah, blah, blah. And in doing so, what students are doing is they're building phonics, they're building their spelling, and of course expanding their vocabulary. Nell Doak mentioned this in one of her blogs on the ASCD website, I guess it is. And it's just a game. I like to tell teachers when I chat with them, how many of us adults play games when we get together with family and friends? Get out the boggle, scrabble, balderdash, wheel of fortune password, right? And if we like to play games, why wouldn't kids? And it is a kind of a game activity. And I mentioned one other thing too. If you play wordle regularly or scrabble or whatever the game it is that you're playing, you do it regularly, you get better at it. And we have a special name for it. It's called learning, right? Don't we want kids to expand their learning of words and their fascination with words at the same time? Now, the one thing that Melissa and I have done with our word letters, and by the way, they're in our new vocabulary book, is that the first word in the ladder and the last word in the ladder go together in some way, like dog to cat or red to blue or something like that. There's some sort of semantic connection to them, which makes it even more game-like. And the research is there. Research by Isabel Beck, Bruce McCandless, and others have found that doing this on a regular basis with students, especially the ones that we worry about, kids who struggle when it comes to word study, shows improvements not only in phonics but also in comprehension. Because of course, if you know what the words mean and you're able to decode it, you're more likely to understand what the text is that you're reading. So it's just a fun way. It's not a program all by itself, but it's something like many of our strategies in our book that can be fit whenever you have a chance to do them. And I might add one other thing here before I turn it back over to you is, we've given you several of these word letters in our book. But the idea behind all our strategies is that you become that artful teacher yourself and create your own word letters. They're not all that difficult to do. And eventually to the point where kids can do it themselves, they become artful as well. And that really is the goal for all of these is for kids to begin to internalize these strategies and learn to love words. I have a special word I use, I call it lexophiles. That file means love, so a lexophile is somebody who loves words. And that's the goal for all of this to developing kids that fascination and love with words.

Speaker 1:
[48:21] Yeah, and Tim, I just want to give a little plug there. The word letter stuff can be, it is so fun. And Melissa too, thank you for your work on this. I used it in the classroom to go back to what you said with the seasons, right? Different seasons were changing, different holidays were happening.

Speaker 5:
[48:38] Right.

Speaker 1:
[48:39] Current events, I mean, it's election day. Okay. I feel like our slogan should be like, there's a word letter for that. Because there really, really is. It's so good for different things happening throughout the year, the things that happen all the time. But then it's also, I used to use them like, okay, so in history we were learning about a specific concept, then I would pull a word letter that would align with that concept, just to get kids thinking about the vocabulary that they're learning. I mean, it could be in class, it could be homework, you're just helping them build that familiarity and again, get those reps with the words. So they're moving from that receptive to expressive and this is really one great way to do that.

Speaker 5:
[49:24] I think so for sure. It could be, as you mentioned, this jumping off point to a larger discussion about that content in history or social studies, whatever it might be.

Speaker 1:
[49:36] Yeah, science, health, there's so many word letters, yeah.

Speaker 5:
[49:40] We started by just doing them myself, but what happened was Melissa came and said, you know, why don't we start doing them around content areas? And so that was our work together on these. We have a book on content areas for the early grades, the middle grades, and then actually one on idioms, which is another topic we could spend time on. But I think we're going to run out of time here pretty soon.

Speaker 1:
[50:06] We are. And before we do, I do want to make sure that we get to, you know, connect this, we alluded to it earlier, but to connect vocabulary to fluency. So Tim, I want to give you some time to talk about the connection between vocabulary and fluency and, you know, just kind of name that and what it means when it comes to instruction. Sure.

Speaker 5:
[50:27] Yeah, this is a fascinating area that we need to explore more. When we talk about fluency, we most often talk about automaticity, the ability to recognize words automatically. And, you know, our fluency instruction will, I'm sorry, our vocabulary instruction will help students learn to recognize those more challenging words, not only quicker but more automatically, which then allows students to draw their attention to meaning making, which of course is comprehension. So this development of automatistic is not only a phonics activity, but it's also vocabulary as well, as long as we make sure that through those repetitions, kids begin to develop a deeper understanding of words. But this other part, and this is the part where I think we can really explore this. I love this quote by Maya Angelou, the poet. She writes, words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with shades of deeper meaning. And I just love that quote, because what she's talking about is that it's not just the words that carry the meaning, it's the way you say the words. And of course, when you're talking fluency, we're talking about prosody. The idea about the way you say words, the way you express the words orally, even when we read silently, may change the meaning. And my favorite example of that is the word dude, D-U-D-E. You know, it can be various things. For example, to say hello to somebody, it might be, dude, dude. But if you were to express consternation or disappointment with someone, you might say, dude. Or if you were to ask a question, it might be, dude. Or if you just won the lottery, it'd be, dude. It's the same word, but it has different meanings. And the meaning is not in the word itself, but in the way that that word is used with your expressiveness that you use even when you're reading silently. So this is something that we should bring into the conversation also with our students. And we tried to do that in our book as well, helping kids see that it's not just the words, but the way you say the words that make the difference.

Speaker 1:
[52:32] Oh, that resonates so much. I'm going to be dude-ing it later, all day long, dude-ing all day long. So thank you for sharing that. And do you have any routines that teachers listening can use, I mean, I'm sure we've talked about them before, but just to kind of bring to the front, to integrate fluency and vocabulary?

Speaker 5:
[52:53] Oh, sure. There's so many of them. I'll just mention one in particular, Reader's Theatre, where kids are given a short script, not terribly long, it has many parts in it, and is embedded with what we might call those juicy words, those interesting words. But what happens is the kids have to rehearse it. So they practice that text or rehearse it Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and on Friday, of course, they perform it orally with expression to an audience. That audience might be their classmates, could be parents, could be the school principal, whatever. That makes it a more authentic activity. But I'd like to take it a step further. In our own reading clinic, we found that kids love Reader's Theatre. It's such a great way to become a star. But we found that kids can actually write their own scripts. Teachers do as well. Take a story like Frog and Toad and turn it into a script. They're really easy to do because Frog and Toad are mostly just a conversation between those two characters. But what happens is when students begin to turn a trade book into a script, they're encountering those wonderful words that Arnold Lobel used and they begin to use it in their own writing. So they're applying vocabulary not only for reading purposes, but they're also developing using that model text, that mentor text to develop their own writing skills as well. So there are just so many connections between fluency and vocabulary development that we can take advantage of for sure.

Speaker 1:
[54:27] Yeah, I love that. I was thinking of students are learning about, I'm thinking in history or social studies, students learn about the difference between rural, urban, and suburban communities. You could take that frog and toad and say frog and toad go to the city, right? And like, there's your vocabulary integration. Like here are a couple of words we're going to use in your script and then include those words in like, how much fun is that? Like students are going to have the best time writing these scripts, performing them, I mean, and what ownership we're giving them.

Speaker 5:
[55:01] Yeah, right, that agency, that authenticity, these are things that we do in real life. We have playwrights who write plays and we don't expect to get to write an entire Broadway play, but of course they can do a three or four page script quite easily, especially if they have that mentor text in front of them. By the way, urban and suburban are both Latin roots that mean city. Okay, I'm going to stop.

Speaker 1:
[55:29] I didn't know that that was a Latin root.

Speaker 2:
[55:33] I was just going to say we love readers theater and we have a couple of episodes devoted just to readers theater and we can put those in the show notes if people want to learn more about it. But it is time to wrap up. Unfortunately, I don't want to. I want to keep hearing about more of your strategies, but I'll read your book, which is just full of so many more. But as we wrap up, I know some teachers are probably going to eat up and be like, I'm ready to go. Then others might feel a little more like, oh my gosh, where do I even start? So I'm wondering if we could just do a quick go around to everybody and hear from each of you. What's one practical tip you would leave for those teachers who might be feeling a little bit anxious or not knowing where to start with these new vocabulary strategies?

Speaker 4:
[56:15] Something had just popped into my mind that there's part of our book that is broken into a section that says strategies for words that you have, and the second section is strategy for words that we provide. I think a good strategy is whether you have a really more scripted curriculum or you have one where you have no materials and you're on your own, that the book can help you because we have some strategies. If you have words that you are required to use, and a lot of teachers do, that we have some strategies where you can still have some autonomy with how you teach them. Going to that individual, it's under that wise element of I, the individual word learning, so that you can decide, this is a strategy that would work because I have to teach these words. It feels very un-intimidating when you go to that section, and then also for the section of I have no idea what words to teach, we've provided some that are high utility words.

Speaker 3:
[57:10] I've gone back and forth about the practical tip that I wanted to share with you. I guess whatever comes out of my mouth is the final decision. But I was trying to think of what would be something that if somebody left this podcast, I could start doing today. And one of the tips that I wanted to give is no matter what words you're choosing, something I would recommend all teachers do is to add the words that you have explicitly taught to your lesson plans and make a visual for the students. So whatever individual words you've had, I always kept them in my lesson plans. Why? Because then I can be more word conscious. If I have those words in front of me, I can be more intentional about using it. And if I have it there in front of my kids and I'm being more intentional about using it, we're also supporting them in being more intentional, being more word conscious students. So my tip would be write the words down and put them on the wall.

Speaker 5:
[58:04] I love that Savannah. And I'm going to take that a little bit different direction. I like, you know, we talk about pre-teaching words. And of course, that's always great. But what about having kids become the ones that choose the words that we're going to learn? This development of word consciousness. I call it word harvesting. But it goes by a variety of names. But whenever students read, or perhaps even better, whenever we read to our students, we know that authors of trade books on purpose use wonderful language, wonderful words. We'll have kids begin to develop that connoisseurship. After we get through reading, not only talk about the words, what we read, the content, but are there any interesting words that we can harvest and we put those words on display. As you mentioned, Savannah and the teacher, my job is to elaborate on what do these words mean? What are the synonyms for the words and so on? But once they're on display, then the challenge for students is to use them. In their oral language, in your written language, teacher might say at the end of the day, okay, write in your journals, use at least two words from today's word wall. The thing is, these are words that they have chosen, so that notion of ownership, which we think is so important, becomes a tangible part of that instruction. And all you have to do is read to your kids every day, which we all do.

Speaker 1:
[59:30] These are so helpful. I feel like our listeners are just going to explode with vocabulary learning after this. So thank you so, so much for being here. Again, The Megabook of Vocabulary. It is out and about in the world, so please grab it. We'll link it in the show notes. We'll also link all of the resources that we shared today, podcast episodes, etc. We'll give you a little, a goodie printable, a goodie bag printable for teachers. So that's in the show notes too, and of course on our social. So make sure that you're looking around and we'll make sure that you get that so you can print it out and try all of the amazing strategies that we shared in this episode today. Thank you all so, so much for being here.

Speaker 5:
[60:13] You know, if you're interested in the Mega Vocabulary book, you're going to really love the Mega Fluency book as well. Melissa and I did this one a couple of years ago. It's now in its second edition and it's been widely received. Well, well received. So I just wanted to mention that. Look for the Megabooks. They're great.

Speaker 1:
[60:30] Tons of Megabooks. Yes, I actually have the Megabook of Fluency. It's verified on my bookshelf. So thank you for that good work, too.

Speaker 2:
[60:41] To stay connected with us, sign up for our email list at literacypodcast.com. Join our Facebook group and follow us on Instagram and Twitter.

Speaker 1:
[60:51] If this episode resonated with you, take a moment to share with a teacher friend or leave us a five-star rating and review on Apple Podcasts.

Speaker 2:
[61:00] Just a quick reminder that the views and opinions expressed by the hosts and guests of the Melissa & Lori Love Literacy Podcast are not necessarily the opinions of Great Minds PBC or its employees.

Speaker 1:
[61:12] We appreciate you so much and we're so glad you're here to learn with us.