Vocabulary

Tier Words

Text talk, developed by Beck and Mckeown and their collegues is a read-aloud strategy that focuses on vocabulary development.  By engaging children in meaningul discusions about books, teachers can use text talk read-alouds to provide a context for teaching new words.  A teacher begins a text talk lesson by reading a story aloud and engaging in rich discussion with children.  The teacher then targets several words from the story to discuss in more depth.  Deep meaning of these words becomes the focus of the lesson.  Teachers should create their own definitions to make the word meanings more assessible.  A child-friendly definition uses everyday language to explain the meaning of the word. To create a child-friendly definition, Beck suggested teachers ask themselves, "When do I use this word?" "Why do we have this word?" Staying focused on the central meaning or concept of the word rather than the multiple meanings of the word promotes understanding. After explaining in child-friendly language what a target word means, the teacher should require students to use and interact witht the word by thinking about its meaning. The goal of this portion of the text talk lesson is to make word meaning explicit and clear and to engage students in actively thinking about and using the meanings right away.  A teacher might elect to ask children to use the word themselves or to respond to the teacher's use of the word.

The selection of appropriate words is one of the the most important aspects of a good text talk lesson. The teacher should choose words that can be connected to what students know, can be explained with words they know, and will be useful and interesting to students. Beck (2004) explained that there are "tiers" of word utility. Beck suggests targeting Tier 2 words.

Artifacts: 

 These are folders used to keep important words students add to their vocabulary. Click here for original blog. 

Student walk around and ask a yes/no question about their word. After everyone guesses their word, they share what clues helped them figure it out. Click here for original blog. 

In this vocab version of Twister, students must red the index card they land on and have to guess what vocabulary word goes with the picture, sentence, or definition they read. Click here for original blog.

Vocabulary display with science content. Click here for source. 

"One Letter Change Game" Great for those random 3-4 time fillers. Click here for source.