So far, my posts have focused mainly on the Reading Specialist aspect of my role. If you remember from my first post about building a schedule, my day is divided into 2 parts. The reading specialist part happens in the afternoon, so what do my mornings look like?
In the mornings, I have time dedicated to the Literacy Coach part of my job description. I use that time in different ways to help serve teachers and students. While no two days are the same, over the next few weeks I plan to delve into the various things that I utilize my mornings for.
As a literacy coach, it is my job to present professional learning to the staff in my school. In fact, the law in my state requires me to present a certain number of minutes every year. I knew that since my school had never had a Reading Specialist/Literacy Coach, I needed to be very strategic and intentional with the content I presented. My very presence indicated change, and I know that change can be very difficult, so I wanted to pick something that all of the teachers could use in order to generate buy-in. As a result, I chose to start with Vocabulary strategies.
Why Vocabulary
I chose to start with vocabulary strategies for a couple of different reasons. The first is because every teacher, every content area, has vocabulary. I felt like it would be an easy place to start and get strong buy-in from my teachers.
Secondly, I had attended the Kansas MTSS symposium that year. The MTSS Symposium in an annual 2-day conference held in Wichita, KS. There are a number of different workshops offered to provide support for schools as they strengthen their MTSS programs. My first time attending was in September of 2022 when I first started in my current role. In several of the workshops I attended, the emphasis on vocabulary was evident. One of the quotes I wrote down was, “It has been estimated that 80% of comprehension in nonfiction is dependent upon understanding the vocabulary.” Another was, “Research indicates the best chance to close the reading gap is to explicitly teach vocabulary.” This reinforced to me why starting with vocabulary strategies was a good idea.
I decided to introduce Vocabulary as our first Building-Wide Strategy.
Getting Teacher Buy-In
Now that I picked a starting topic, I had to pick a simple, yet effective way to present this to my teachers. There are so many different vocabulary strategies, so I wanted to pick something easy for my teachers to implement. My goal is always to do what is most beneficial for our students while not adding more to the teachers’ plates. Another speaker in one of the many workshops I attended said it beautifully. He said that a teacher’s plate is so full. We don’t want to keep adding to it, rather, we need to examine our plates. He compared good, useful practices to broccoli, and fun, yet not as effective strategies to chocolate. We need to make sure that our plates have a balance. Some chocolate is fine, but maybe we need to remove a piece of chocolate and replace it with some broccoli. That’s what I wanted to do with my teachers. I want them to feel empowered and motivated to use the strategies that I present.
Picking Just One – Or Not
As I mentioned earlier, there are lots of different vocabulary strategies out there. I started by using Dr. Anita Archer’s explicit vocabulary routine. Dr. Archer is renowned for her work on explicit instruction. She has developed a routine for introducing vocabulary words that any teacher in any content can follow. Teachers can use this routine when introducing the words so that students have a strong grasp on each word.
I love Dr. Archer’s routine, but I still decided to add to it for our building-wide vocabulary strategy. We decided as a school to focus on morphology with our vocabulary instruction. I added a piece in Step 2 of the Modified Routine in order to include this, as shown:
Let’s be clear, I don’t expect my teachers to know the morphology of all the words they introduce. This is where my flexible schedule comes in handy. Before teachers begin their unit, they send me the list of words they want to use. I go through the list word by word and create a spreadsheet like the one pictured below. I include information about the morphology, provide a student-friendly definition (highlighted in yellow), and add other interesting details that I learn about the word (highlighted in blue). Teachers can then take this information and pick which pieces they feel would fit best in the time-frame that they have to teach.
Here is a sample spreadsheet from our 6th Grade Social Studies Medieval Europe unit:
And another from the 8th Grade Math unit on triangles:
This is a very time-consuming process, which is why I offer my time and expertise to help oy teachers. By having time built into my schedule, I can do the research and get this information back to my teachers in a timely fashion. Then they can use it right away.
How do you teach vocabulary in your school? Do you have a building-wide strategy that works for you? Let me know in the comments!
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What works for your school? How do you introduce vocabulary effectively?
