The Vocabulary Deficit Or Why add another thing to my to-do list?

With new data just released from SBAC scores and headlines like  Income inequality in Bay Area exceeds national levels from SF Gate on July 30, 2015, we have a specific call to action for teaching and learning in the MVLA district.

While we know diversity is a resource in our classrooms, being aware of the economic diversity in our classrooms adds another needed dimension to teaching and learning literacy.

The SF Gate article cites a 2013 study that found that the “Households with incomes among the top five percent of all households in the Bay Area “have average incomes of $489,000, according to the institute.That is 31.5 times the average income of the households at the bottom 20 percent of all Bay Area households, who earn about $15,500.”


Los Altos, Los Altos Hills, and Mountain View data

Data from the Santa Clara County Department of Public Health indicates that we 22% of our children ages 0-17 in Mountain View, 6% in Los Altos Hills, and 2% in Los Altos live in poverty.  Being an economically disadvantaged teen in our high schools is a very challenging minority status.

What does the data  mean for our students and our teaching?

Research continues to indicate that students from lower income households have learned “30 million less words by age three than other three year olds.” (Betty Hart and Todd R. Risley)

Without intervention, the gap grows. Those with lower reading scores get less exposure to and practice with challenging academic language, resulting in cumulative deficits (Louisa Moats, 2014) and a continued risk of an exponential falling behind.

And then reading becomes even more difficult for our students after grade 5: At grade 5 students are expected to learn at least 3,000 new word meanings per year from reading and direct instruction, just to keep up. Words are topic-specific and low-frequency. More background knowledge is required to make inferences and construct the meaning of the whole text.  Sentences are longer, more complex, and contain more ideas. Stamina and persistence are expected; meaning is constructed over longer segments of text.  (Moats, 2014)

The student who guesses, who has no strategies and confuses similar sounds, little automatic/previous exposure, or informed recognition, can’t decode, so if you don’t have the word recognition you get tired…  (Hart and Risley)

When They Get to MVLA

As we ask our students to do more reading, writing, and explaining, it is crucial for us to address any vocabulary deficits that prevent our students from working with challenging material.

Increased literacy improves our students’ ability to understand complex texts and explain their own thinking.  Greater literacy not only allows us to more authentically assess and address their mastery of content and skills, but it empowers our students for a lifetime of interacting with complex ideas.

Our call to action isn’t just to compensate for the inequities in knowledge stemming from inequities of wealth, but also to give our students the tools needed to succeed at the Common Core, understanding that because Common Core are potentially new standards, some of our current high school students have not had the benefit of a robust literacy education.

What We Can Do

Below are two groups of verbs for you to consider using with our students. These words can be added to your directions, prompts, and instruction.  Focusing on directive verbs helps students understand what type of thinking they should be doing.  When our students aren’t fluent with sophisticated or complex verbs, they might not understand what is expected of them.  For example, if asked to “discriminate” a student may think it is always an act they should avoid, rather than realize that they may be being asked to note differences.  Teaching and using sophisticated, complex, and varied prompts and directions can address inequities and empower all of our students.

 

The following are the “Critical Verbs,” (M. Springer) listed by grade level of expected mastery for CCSS. Thus, the expectation is that our juniors will be competent in all of the following skills.

Kindergarten: compare, contrast, describe, distinguish, identify , retell

1st grade: demonstrate, determine, draw, explain, locate, suggest, support

2nd grade: comprehend, develop

3rd grade: organize, refer

4th grade infer, integrate, interpret, paraphrase, summarize

5th grade: analyze

6th grade: articulate, cite, delineate, evaluate, trace

11th grade: synthesize.

The following is a list of verbs grouped by skills.  

As you assign a particular task or activity, you can add to the depth of their work while also expanding your students’ vocabulary and literacy. (Marzano, Kinsella, CCSS)

Add To	Create/Develop	Evaluate	Prove & Argue	Seek Information
deepen	accomplish	assess	assert	capture
incorporate	achieve		confirm	compile
integrate	build	Execute	qualify	elicit
	compose	advance	specify	encounter
Arrange	construct	employ	justify	evoke
sort	form	navigate	challenge
	generate		claim	Symbolize
Collaborate	initiate	Explain	promote	depict
engage	stimulate	articulate	verify	model
interact		narrate
	Decide	recount	Pull Apart	Think Metacognitively
Compare/Contrast	select	synthesize	decompose	appreciate
associate		clarify	decontextualize	attend
categorize	Define	convey	diagnose	monitor
differentiate	delineate		grapple	preserve
discriminate	discern	Pose	partition	reflect
link	establish	hypothesize	Probe
relate	exemplify			Transform
connect	recall	Infer	Reference	accentuate
distinguish	determine	deduce	acknowledge	conform
accomplish		infer	trace	convert
	Elaborate		cite	manipulate
	broaden	Measure		adapt
	derive	gauge	Big Picture	revise
	enhance	quantify	contextualize
	elaborate		orient
	expand	Problem Solve
		overcome
		surmount
		resolve