Hi, and welcome to the smarter literacy podcast from ascend Smarter Intervention.
Where our mission is to simplify effective literacy instruction to make teaching literacy easier and more accessible for everyone.
We are your hosts, Lindsey, and Corey.
And in today's quick tip episode, we're gonna be sharing Arvo vocabulary framework, which you can easily implement at any grade level and across all subject areas.
In our last episode, we discussed the importance of language comprehension instruction as part of the literacy intervention process.
And today, we wanted to share our vocabulary framework to help you incorporate vocabulary instruction in a fun and engaging way for your students.
And by the end of this episode, we hope you'll be willing to try out this vocabulary framework with your students so you can get rid of that rote memorization.
Perfect.
Alright, Corey.
Let's dive right in.
What is the vocabulary framework? So we use a two part process that consists of both receptive and expressive vocabulary.
So first, you wanna start by addressing receptive vocabulary, which is a student's under standing of words.
We want students to be able to rate their understanding of words.
So we have students rate their knowledge starting with a one.
This might as well be a nonsense word.
Never heard of it.
Moving into a two, which would be, I've heard of this word, but I don't really know what it means.
Moving into a three, I'm pretty sure I know what this word means, and then all the way to a four.
I know what this word means, and I am confident that I can define it effectively.
Now this is important because it helps to develop that meta cognitive skill of knowing what we know and knowing what we don't know.
So a lot of our students have difficulty with some of that meta cognition, and they think they know words that they actually don't.
And so we wanna start helping them to develop some of that.
Then after we have gone through that receptive framework, we're gonna move into the expressive framework.
So for the expressive vocabulary framework, we want students to be able to define words effectively.
And the best way that they can do that is by providing a category for the word.
So this might be a group that the word would fit into.
So this could be a part of speech, or it could be more specific.
So it could be something like this is an animal, or this is a feeling, or this is a scientific study, or this is a math term, something like that.
Then we have them provide a function purpose or defining feature for the word.
So basically, we're asking what does it do? Why does it exist? What does it look like? Just give us a little bit more information about this specific word.
Then we want to have them provide a synonym or a word or concept that might be similar.
Finally, we want them to provide an antonym or a shade of meaning.
Sometimes this looks like explaining how the word is actually different from the word that they just used as a synonym or a word that was similar.
I have to say, I I love the vocabulary framework so much.
In fact, I just used it with a student two nights ago, and we are working through the, uh, word entomologist.
I did ask him, I said, you know, do you know this word? And He didn't read it quite a one.
He did not know the word.
He said, however, it seems familiar to me.
It's it's right now in science class, we're talking about all these different types of scientists, And he mentioned, you know, a biologist, uh, zoologist.
And so I was like, okay.
Great.
So what are you thinking? And he said, well, the ologist part makes me think it has something to do with, like, a a science or scientist.
And he said, yes.
You're absolutely right.
So we were able to work through the rest of the framework, and we are able to go back into the passage we are working through where entomologist was used And we were able to figure out, well, an entomologist is a scientist.
That's our category.
Right? And it is someone who specifically studies books.
And from there, he was able to give me a synonym.
It was similar to one of the other sciences that they have been studying.
And then we use the shade of meaning.
However, an entomologist versus a zoologist, uh, would study bugs.
Right? So he was able to work through that whole framework.
Without truly knowing what this word had meant, he had never come across it before.
And it he was like he was really proud of himself, but, like, just using that little bit of what the word he knew and using his background knowledge and his previous knowledge, to walk through the framework and figure out what it meant.
It was awesome.
And it's so great too because I think what it does is it gives them some autonomy over it too and autonomy over the definition because I think when we were talking before about that rote memorization, Often, when you look at the dictionary and what the dictionary is giving you, it's giving you these definitions that feel so complicated and so complex that you're still not making true meaning out of it.
But when he's thinking about that word and he's relating it to other concepts that he knows, you can just build so much confidence through that.
Absolutely.
And again, just kind of that application makes it feel like, again, that real reading that we've kind of been talking about.
So, Corey, how can we incorporate this into our instruction easily? So one thing I would say is if you're introducing new concepts in different subject areas, you might wanna start by providing pertinent vocabulary words to the unit or lesson and having students start by reading their knowledge on the word from that one to four scale.
And then working together to complete the vocabulary framework.
So the category, functions, synonym, antonym.
So again, anytime you're going through a new topic, a new unit, anything, this would be a good opportunity to just pull a couple of words that you might come across.
Absolutely.
And not just for our ELA class time or class periods, but I see this in science, social, math.
You know, there are lots of math terms out there that could work in this vocabulary framework easily.
Absolutely.
And another idea would be to have students circle or underline words that they would rate as a one or a two as they're reading so you can discuss together as a class or as an intervention group.
Now be aware this is a higher level skill because students need to have a strong metacognitive skills that we were talking about before to even know that they should be stopping and pausing to reflect on understanding, but it's a great habit to start early with your kids of, hey, I want you to try and find one or two words in this message that we could read a one or a two so that we can talk about them together.
I would almost think that this could be, like, a great warm up.
Right? At the start of each class, you choose one word that maybe you're noticing your students are have been struggling with or you you might predict that your students are struggling with.
And model it and work through it together to go through the framework.
So that way when the kids kinda set off to do it on their own and they're using those meta cognitive skills, they're better prepared.
Right? Absolutely.
Well, we hope that this quick tip strategy helps you.
Let us know how it goes.
We also have a free download that you can grab in our show notes with our vocabulary framework that includes the receptive vocabulary rating scale and the expressive vocabulary definition framework.
So make sure to check that out too.
In our upcoming episodes, we'll be sharing more about developing fluency and writing skills.
So make sure to stay tuned.
Oh, cannot wait looking forward to those.
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Happy teaching
