Classroom Vignette of Extended Content-Based Vocabulary Development

“The teacher is aware that it helps the MLLs to see the written form as well as hear the word when they learn new vocabulary words. As part of her instructional methods, she incorporated two complementary strategies she had learned for teaching vocabulary, the Four-Square Graphic Organizer and the Six-Step Process of Building Academic Vocabulary (see explanation above).  These strategies allowed her to address the needs of the diverse learners in her classroom, giving students varied ways to represent and practice using vocabulary in context. For the newcomers, these strategies provided structured and explicit vocabulary instruction. For other MLLs, these strategies provided practice using vocabulary in context and allowed them to craft sentences based on their existing language skills.  It also helped the MLLs to connect the spelling of a word to the sound of words that they had heard but did not recognize in print.

The teacher used an adapted Four Square Graphic Organizer and included a few additional elements to develop students’ understanding more deeply.  The four sections in her adapted graphic organizer include: 1) a definition in students’ own words, 2) words in the word family and synonyms to connect to prior knowledge, 3) the sentence from the text where the word is used to contextualize, and 4) a non-linguistic representation (ex. image, picture, or equation). She goes through the same process when she teaches new vocabulary in all of her classes, ensuring that students are familiar with the format and can focus on the word. 

After students had seen the word used in context, she wanted them to internalize the meaning by practicing and restating the definition.  To provide scaffolding to support language development, she adapted the six-step process for building academic vocabulary (Marzano, 2004; see description above) in this way to align with her use of the Four-Square graphic organizer: 

• For Steps 1 and 2, she asked students to turn to a partner and use their own words to explain the new term to each other. 
• For Step 3, she showed a few pictures and had the students draw their own representation of their understanding of the word.  She reminded the students that they don’t have to be great artists, the connection to the visual representation will help them to remember the new word. 
• For Step 4, she encouraged students to write the word in any other languages that they speak and to add synonyms and other common uses of the word.  
• For Step 5, she had each student create their own sentence using the vocabulary word and share them in groups.  
• For Step 6, she played games with the vocabulary to review concepts at the end of the unit.

To connect the vocabulary of this lesson to authentic experiences and contextualize her instruction, The teacher engaged students in a discussion about things they regularly divide into fractional parts to share.  She asked students to think about foods they share with their siblings, cousins, or friends.  To build in sufficient wait time for her MLLs students to be able to process and think of ideas, she told her students to take one minute to quietly think and write their ideas down if they finished thinking before the time was up.  She asked them to think about how they could share half of their food with someone else. The student who said she likes chips said she would count out 20 chips and give away 10 to her sibling.  The teacher knew that this student had some proficiency with the vocabulary so she asked her to state that as a fraction. When the student said that 10 out of 20 equals half, the teacher asked her to write that on the board.  The student wrote the fraction 10/20 and the word “half”.  The teacher asked her for another way to write half and the student wrote ½. To reinforce the use of math vocabulary, she encouraged the student to state the terms she had written, and she had the class repeat after her. 

She asked all the students to think about how that student could share her chips if two more cousins came over and there were four people.  She asked everyone to take out a piece of paper and draw or write what this would look like. Some students were able to immediately write out 5/20=1/4.  Some drew the chips in four quarters.  The teacher encouraged students to talk about what they had written or drawn, using the academic vocabulary they knew. For students who were more fluent with the math vocabulary, she encouraged them to come up with terms like one-half and one-fourth.  For the newcomers, She said the words and had them repeat. To bring this discussion to a close with a focus on vocabulary, She wrote two sentence frames on the board and had students complete them. She selected students to read their responses out loud and made the connections between the fractions they had written and the terms “one-half” and “one-quarter”. The teacher said that for homework, what she would like each student to do is to think of something they would eat at home that evening and how they could share it.  They could bring a drawing of how they split it up or write an equation and a sentence.” 

This vignette is adapted from UDL for Language Learners (Torres & Rao)