Individual Career Development Plan: Academic Vocabulary

by Elizabeth O'Connor

This year my ICDP focused on building a student's academic vocabulary within the book club format. 

Need:
I found that students require specific instruction in academic vocabulary in order to successful in an academic setting. Students may lack academic vocabulary for a variety of reasons, but mainly it is because academic vocabulary is not used at home or in their social lives where they experience most of their interactions. If introducing more than one word per week, the words should be related. Students gain more understanding if they create their own definition/meaning of the word. In addition a nonverbal representation of a word is helpful tool that promotes comprehension.  Academic vocabulary is essential to process academic tasks such as those included in the Common Core, IA Assessments, or any standardized tests.

I was seeing success in my room with the tier 1 vocabulary instruction I was doing, but it was not transferring to their general academic classes. Therefore, I wanted a better way to provide support to be successful in other classes, thus we concentrated on academic vocabulary this year.

Successes:
Students are better able to identify academic vocabulary words and understand their meaning in the context in which they are presented. Most students are able to demonstrate their understanding of academic vocabulary words by using them correctly in their book club presentations, which directly relate to the book they are reading. Students are able to attempt using multiple vocabulary words in their book club presentation. 

Results:

Students have required repeated exposure and practice with words in order to successfully demonstrate their understanding. Students are now better able to verbalize their understanding than demonstrate it in their writing. When students come across a vocabulary word in their reading, they are able to successfully understand it.

Students are better able to identify academic vocabulary words and understand their meaning in the context in which they are presented. Most students are able to demonstrate their understanding of academic vocabulary words by using them correctly in their book club presentations, which directly relate to the book they are reading. Students are able to attempt using multiple vocabulary words in their book club presentation.

Addressing Characteristics of Effective Instruction and Universal Constructs:

The classroom is student-centered and requires students to discovery their own knowledge through the process of selecting their own novel. The implementation of academic vocabulary words allows for students to maintain a high level of understanding that is applicable across content areas.

Learner difference is addressed through an adaptable curriculum, that allows for students’ needs to determine the pacing of the vocabulary introduced. Furthermore, learning is individualized as students participate in the creative and critical-thinking processes.

Students demonstrate complex communication when transferring what they have read to their own written product. Students are exposed to various backgrounds and worldviews depending on the book selection they have made. Special attention is paid to fostering an open-mindedness with regards to choosing various genres of book by a variety of authors.

Integration Reflection:

Reflecting after the first half of the year of integrating academic vocabulary into the book club format, most of the students have been able to be successful using the new vocabulary in their book club presentations. Part of this success I believe is from being flexible when identifying whether or not to move onto a new word, or whether to spend an extra week(s) on a word, because the majority of the class had not experienced success. For example, our last word was addition(al)(ly), and this word required additional practice and exposures in order for most students to demonstrate that they could use this word in a sentence. 

I think the students that were not able to use this word correctly failed to turn in book club on time, and therefore did not get the feedback they would have gotten otherwise. The lack of feedback allowed them to continue to use to word incorrectly; however, I feel confident that when encountered in someone else’s writing, they would know the words’ meaning. I am ok with this level of understanding, because being able to use words correctly in a sentence is at the highest level of understanding. Also, recognizing a word in a text and understanding it’s meaning, I believe is a proficient level, as most students did not know the words’ meaning prior to studying it.

Again, my main focus was increasing students' academic vocabulary sizes.