The five major components of reading are phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, comprehension, and vocabulary. Beers starts off right away by discussing the importance and value of teaching vocabulary as it gives students a means of advancing their knowledge of the world around them. As she describes, vocabulary instruction that consists of students matching words to definitions is not going to cut it for teaching students how to apply and use those words in their conversations. Beers brings up the importance of high school diplomas and how they are often times "broken promises" given to students telling them that they have the means to succeed when all they did was manage to get by by memorizing and learning how to pass by doing the bare minimum. She argued that we need to add value to our students diplomas by being teachers who provide students with content backed by meaningful experiences and life application they can use for college and future careers. She also poses the question that as educators, we have the means and the research to know what students need, so why do the circumstances prove otherwise? The quote on page 88 from Baumann and Kame'enui states, "We know too much to say we know too little and we know too little to say that we know enough." Beers adds that the transfer of research into classroom instruction is what we are lacking. This is so true! Just from going through the vast bank of educational research for class assignments proves there is no lack of information. It is even more true that these research articles and studies can be hard for teachers to pull from and transfer into their classroom practices. Teachers even have a learning curve just like students when it comes to deciphering new or complex material. I find myself having to do re-reading and constant annotating when reading educational research.
Going back to vocabulary, it, like any topic, has no one-size fits all method and requires variety in teaching styles and strategies in order to give students multiple pathways toward confidence and success in learning and using new words. To address the components of teaching vocabulary, Beers lays out the groundwork for strategies teachers can easily bring into their own classrooms. One of the strategies I would agree to be successful and that I plan on implementing is the use of graphic organizers. Having a visual image of organized information is not only helpful for visual learners, but for all students who struggle with making connections, understanding relationships between concepts, and pulling out key information. I have used graphic organizers in previously taught lessons and enjoy using them with students because they are tools that can be used in every subject area. They are also versatile, come in many forms, and can easily be adapted to what is best for the content being discussed. The other strategy that I liked was the "Concept Circles" which can be used as a means of assessment as it requires students to have knowledge of the word along with how that word connects to other words. This is a way to evaluate student's understanding while helping them with their expressive language skills as opposed to just being able to recognize the definition on a test. You want to make sure that students level of understanding eventually reaches the application stage to where students can use new words in their own exchanges with family, friends, etc. Beers comments, "we are teaching content for transfer sake." Vocabulary is so important because when students expand their word bank and learn words that they can use in their spoken and written language, they can have further success in other elements of reading such as comprehension which the book points out. Every student has a different set of experiences and prior knowledge that determines their understanding of words. Some are exposed to more words than others which is why teachers should strive to provide quality instruction using what students to know to guide them to learn something new.
In Hinchman's chapter, he addresses similar concepts about teaching vocabulary. He talks about the importance of leading students to use "meta cognitive strategies" independently by modeling and showing students what using those strategies look like. He also mentioned that having students discuss those strategies among peers can be beneficial. Through discussion, students can discover new methods that their peers have had success with. Adolescent students often place more value on what their friends suggest over what teachers suggest so peer collaboration can be greatly beneficial. Hinchman then gives some different strategies such as "Teach-Teach-Trade, Word a Day, and Root Word Web." All these strategies had an emphasis of having students take vocabulary words and describe them through multiple means such as written definitions, word parts, pictures, their own sentences, etc.
The last thing Hinchman addressed was using digital means for students to develop their vocabulary. He suggested websites such as "Wordle" and "Glogster," both which I have used in my high school English classes. A site like Glogster is a great alternative to students making poster boards as students all have the same resources when it comes to aesthetic (Plus you can add video and music to glogster which is really cool). One of my classes today was just discussing how poster board assignments can put students who cannot afford to buy materials at a disadvantage. Digital means of describing vocabulary is a great way to engage and motivate learners while also allowing creativity.
Vocabulary is an aspect of reading that is often not viewed as important as comprehension and fluency but the truth is that vocabulary will lead to student progress in other areas (which the book backs up with research.) I think there is a lot of space for creativity and fun when learning vocab especially when students create displays, have peer discussion/class games and activities, etc. When I was a student, elementary through high school, I always loved learning new words that I could use in my daily life. It was always a confidence boost when I would come across vocabulary words in other contexts and then be able to know their meaning. Like Beers stated at the end of her chapter, leading students to use new vocabulary words can make them feel like they are using "a secret code" to better understand the world.
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