Literacy and the Vocabulary Link

This year marks our third year of our SIG Grant at Oak Hill Elementary and we are focusing heavily on literacy. With this in mind I am developing a few activities to implement as we begin the school year. During my graduate courses, I plan to learn as much as I can about increasing our kindergartners' vocabularies.




Kindergartners at Oak Hill working on reading skills.

Research seems to state that the achievement struggles in literacy stem from early childhood literacy skills and the lack of proper materials to aid in the learning of these literacy skills. Our school population has the deck stacked against them. The majority of our students entering kindergarten are not prepared and have never been to school. Nearly all (99.5%) of our school population qualifies for free or reduced lunch, and a very large percent of our students are English as a second language (ESL) learners.

"Low incomes children hear on average 30 million fewer words than their more affluent peers before the age of four, leading to a language deficit and low literacy." (Hart and Risley, 1995) Basically, a slow start to vocabulary in kindergarten will be an obstacle that becomes exponentially larger as the student travels up the grade levels. Each year the lower level vocabulary learner will fall further and further behind, widening the “gap.”


Reading First, Mary E. Dahlgren, Ed. D.

"Children whose family incomes are at or below the poverty level are especially likely to struggle with reading, a pattern that emerges early and strengthens in the elementary school years. On recent national assessments, only 43 percent of low income fourth-graders in large urban districts read at a basic level or higher." (Lutkus, Grigg, & Donahue, 2007).

So how can I make a difference with the

kindergarten students at Oak Hill Elementary School?

First, I would love to go beyond the sight word flash cards. I am going to infuse exciting technology into all the literacy-based learning that I can. I will use apps on the iPad such as Pocketphonics-Lite. As a resource, I have created virtual flash cards with vocabulary that we will need as we begin the year. With item words like 'chair' and 'desk,' I have an actual picture of that item and add the word by uploading it to an animoto file. I will use this resource as I embark on talk time with the ESL students. An iPhone app that I plan to use for this comes from voxy.com where they have an infographic. 

Oak Hill Kindergartners at interactive board.

By providing more time and opportunities for students to read or be read to will help support language literacy. We can develop our own stories through the retelling of a book or poem through the use of iPads and iMovies. Or we can make short video clips to provide further instructional aids using Go!Animate and Animoto, as well as other applications. These expansions of activities will help increase the vocabulary development, as well as provide background knowledge for words as they progress as readers. Ideally, we are preparing them for the transition from learning to read to reading to learn.


Another way that we can incorporate more vocabulary infused activities is to provide as many opportunities as we can for hands on discovery of informational texts. "Research focusing on teacher dialogue and availability of classroom materials in low-income first grade classrooms found that teachers spent less than four minutes a day engaging their students with informational texts (kids’ newspapers, National Geographic articles on volcanoes or snakes), as these were often unavailable." (White, Claire E & Kim, James S. 2009) 

Students need to be utilizing informational texts as a vehicle to facilitate conversations. This will help provide much needed background vocabulary, as well as knowledge of words that are around the student in the world. By increasing our talk time with content rich texts, students will increase background knowledge, as well as vocabulary development.

Students are much more likely to learn new words and retain their meanings when we attach a visual, as well as a hands-on activity for the word whenever possible. For example, I will help make vocabulary a part of daily activities.  As we travel to the cafeteria, we may use different words for our trip each day, using tier two words such as journey, embark, traverse, amble, mosey, sanker, wander, traipse, etc.

 I also want to create a rewards-based system that will challenge students to use ‘spectacular’ or ‘outstanding’ words instead of ordinary words. Whenever a child gets ‘caught using these words,’ they are going to be getting a word wizard sticker or stamp. I would also like to have a board, wall or chart in which I can keep a list of words kindergarten word wizards have used.






Resources
Hart & Risley (1995). reachoutloudandread.org. Retrieved from http://www.reachoutandread.org/parents/readingaloud/research.aspx

Lutkis, A.D., Grig, W., & Donahue, P.L. (2007). "The nation's report card: 2007 trial urban district assessment in reading." Retrieved from http://josephrodgers.wiki.westga.edu/file/view/Vocabulary.pdf

[Image of Read First graph chart] n. d. Retrieved from http://www2.ed.gov/programs/readingfirst/2008conferences/language.pdf

White, Claire E., and Kim, James S. (2009) Putting the Pieces of the Puzzle Together, How Systematic Vocabulary Instruction and Expanded Learning Time Can Address the Literacy Gap." Retrieved from http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2009/05/elt language development.html

[Image of the Word Literacy graphic] n. d. Retrieved from http://teacherpages.nhcs.net/SCHOOLS/FORESTHILLS/ERINTRASK/Pages/KindergartenLiteracyCurriculum.aspx

[Image of Kindergarten Site Words video] n. d. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2wei AQkN8

[Image of Learning Matters: Closing the Vocabulary... video] n. d. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFAEdgdae8Y