Philadelphia Empowerment Schools In Collaboration With Voyageru

Philadelphia Empowerment Schools in collaboration with VoyagerU

April 24, 2009 1

Agenda • Skill focus – Continued Vocabulary Development – Current Teacher Practices • Planning and Practice using Philadelphia Schools Empowerment tools • Reflection and Observation

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Agenda • Successes and Challenges • Data analysis review • Skill focus – Vocabulary Development • Planning and Practice using Philadelphia Schools Empowerment tools • Reflection and Observation • Delivery Plan

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Circle of Action

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Successes, Challenges, & SOLUTIONS – Differentiated Instruction – Academic Rigor – Data Analysis and Improvement for schools to improve students’ reading performance – Increase effectiveness regarding successful instructional strategies – Provide specifications and opportunities for schools to improve students’ comprehension performance – Increase communication between all parties 5

Session Goal

Build the knowledge and skills necessary to share and disseminate vocabulary strategies, so that every teacher provides quality instruction to students

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Taking on Unfamiliar Roles • Middle School and High School teachers must take on a new and often unfamiliar role. – how to provide quality reading and writing instruction to meet literacy expectations – instructional strategies to assist struggling readers. Reading to Achieve: A Governors Guide to Adolescent Literacy

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Implications for Practice 1. Adolescence is not too late to intervene. Interventions do benefit older students. 2. Older students with reading difficulties benefit from interventions focused at both the word and the text level. 3. Older students with reading difficulties benefit from improved knowledge of word meanings and concepts. 4. Word-study interventions are appropriate for older students struggling at the word level. 5. Teachers can provide interventions that are associated with positive effects.

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Implications for Practice Continued 6. Teaching comprehension strategies to older students with reading difficulties is beneficial. 7. Older readers’ average gains in reading comprehension are somewhat smaller than those in other reading and reading-related areas studied. 8. Older students with learning disabilities (LD) benefit from reading intervention when it is appropriately focused. 9. To learn more about instructional conditions that could close the reading gap for struggling readers, we will need studies that provide instruction over longer periods of time and assess outcomes with measures more like those schools use to monitor reading progress of all students. 9

Recommendation: Provide explicit vocabulary instruction • Teachers should provide students with explicit vocabulary instruction both as part of reading and language arts classes and as part of content-area classes such as science and social studies. Through: – Direct Instruction – Indirect Instruction

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How to Carry Out the Recommendation

1. Dedicate a portion of the regular classroom lesson to explicit vocabulary instruction. 2. Use repeated exposure to new words in multiple oral and written contexts and allow sufficient practice sessions. 3. Give sufficient opportunities to use new vocabulary in a variety of contexts. 4. Provide students with strategies 11 to make them independent

High School Plan • Refer to your plan – What is the vocabulary model? – What does it look like in the classroom?

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So Which Words To Teach • Useful words (Tier 1) – Clock, baby, happy • High-frequency words (Tier 2) – Coincidence, absurd, industrious • Specific domain words (Tier 3) – Isotope, lathe, peninsula From: Bringing Words to Life (Beck, McKeown& Kucan) 13

Academic Vocabulary • Specialized high utility vocabulary words used in the classroom • Includes high-use academic words (i.e., summarize, analyze, specify, formulate, evaluate, respond) • Includes the vocabulary, grammar, and syntax necessary to completely discuss a topic PRJ III Word List

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College Placement Vocabulary • Specialized high utility vocabulary words used on college placement tests • Includes high-use academic words necessary for college success (i.e., abject, bourgeois, conjecture, locuacious) • Includes the vocabulary, grammar, and syntax necessary to completely understand the word meaning 15

Career, Technology, and Content Vocabulary • Specialized high utility vocabulary words used specific to content and careers • Includes high-use academic words necessary for job success (i.e., accurate, column, exact, freehand) • Includes the vocabulary, grammar, and syntax necessary to completely understand the word meaning and application 16

Effective Vocabulary Teaching Strategies Students Must Learn for Discovering Word Meaning

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Procedures for Analytical Vocabulary Instruction

• Present the word • Explain the meaning/function • Display the word • Have students create a phonological representation

Page 5: Apply in Core Vocabulary Development

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Procedures for Analytical Vocabulary Instruction • Give examples of the word in different contexts • Have students interact with the word • Have students see the word and say the word • Provide practice with the word Page 5: Apply in Core Vocabulary Development

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Explicit Teaching of Word Meanings • • • •

Using Context Using Word Parts Using Dictionaries CPR – Context – Part of Word – Resource

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“Its not what you say or do that ultimately matters…It is what you get the students to do as a result of what you said and did that counts” Archer, Feldman & Kinsella, 2008

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Techniques for Building Word Knowledge • Involve students in thinking about word meanings • Involve students in making associations among • Semantic Features words Analysis • Semantic Mapping • Frayer Model 22

Seven Categories of Word Play – Gallery Walk

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Word Games • • • • • •

HISTO BLUFF BACK WORD Charades Pictionary Scattegories Handout Word Games 24

Agenda • Introduction to the Philadelphia Empowerment School and VoyagerU Framework • Data analysis review • Skill focus – Vocabulary Development • Planning and Practice using Philadelphia Schools Empowerment tools • Reflection and Observation • Delivery Plan

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Empowerment Tools Working in teams, identify: • Vocabulary practices to support items in the “Indicator” column of the walk log – What are items that may be evident to reflect indicators are in place?

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Agenda • Introduction to the Philadelphia Empowerment School and VoyagerU Framework • Data analysis review • Skill focus – Vocabulary Development • Planning and Practice using Philadelphia Schools Empowerment tools • Reflection and Observation • Delivery Plan

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Reflections • What are some things that you want to share at your schools? • What are some things that you currently see in classrooms that you can reinforce? • How can you encourage the use of stronger vocabulary lessons using the current core program?

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