Teaching Middle School ELA
Welcome to the Teaching Middle School ELA podcast, where we are dedicated to helping English Language Arts teachers create dynamic and engaging lessons for their students, while also managing the day-to-day responsibilities that come with being a Middle School ELA teacher.
As educators ourselves, we understand the challenges of finding a work-life balance that allows us to pursue our passion for teaching while also enjoying our personal lives. That's why each Tuesday, hosts Caitlin Mitchell and Jessica Cannata share practical and innovative solutions for managing your workload and staying inspired in your teaching practice.
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If you teach reading and writing to middle schoolers and want to stay up-to-date with the latest trends and best practices in ELA education, then this is the podcast for you! Tune in every week and let us help you make a difference in the lives of your students and in your own teaching career.
Teaching Middle School ELA
Episode 301: Navigating the Science of Reading Part 2: Vocabulary
On this episode of The Teaching Middle School ELA Podcast, Jessica, and Megan continue their series to help you navigate the essential strands of the Reading Rope. This episode is all about vocabulary, why it's important, and a few ways to teach it.
After listening, you'll be able to implement a fun and engaging prediction activity focused on Tier 2 vocabulary words. This activity will not only enhance your students' vocabulary retention but also boost reading comprehension by encouraging students to actively engage with new words. Don’t miss this creative activity to help your students expand their vocabularies and deepen their understanding of the texts they read!
Well, hey there, teachers. Welcome back to our Science of Reading series, where we are helping you navigate the strands of the reading rope with tips and activities to strengthen your students' reading skills. In this particular episode, jessica and Megan delve into the second strand of the reading rope, which is vocabulary. You're going to learn why vocabulary knowledge is so crucial for reading comprehension, and we'll share a simple, fun and effective activity to help students build vocabulary knowledge before they read a story. This is going to be one of those activities that you are sure to use time and time again, so definitely make sure that you add it to those rinse and repeat activities. All right, let's go ahead and dive into this episode. Hi there, ela teachers. Caitlin here.
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Speaker 2:Welcome back to the Teaching Middle School ELA podcast. I'm Jessica and I'm here with Megan. We are kicking off part two of our Science of Reading series, where we're really helping you navigate the strands of the reading rope with tips and activities to help your students strengthen their reading skills, and this episode is all about vocabulary. Now, if you want to start from the beginning and learn a little bit more about the science of reading and the reading rope, you can go back to episode 300, which focuses on background knowledge. However, this episode totally stands on its own and we think you'll find it helpful, whether or not you've heard the last episode and and I think this is important whether or not you're teaching at a school that has embraced the science of reading. So, while I do think most schools have embraced it, if yours hasn't, don't let that deter you from listening to this Like. There are so many tidbits of useful information here.
Speaker 3:Absolutely yes. And, as you mentioned, vocabulary is that second strand on Scarborough's reading rope and we mentioned the first episode that really all of these work together. So it's going to combine knowledge, but each of them also have good things in and of themselves. So background knowledge was first that was the last episode we tackled and then vocabulary knowledge is actually a lot like background knowledge. So background knowledge really acts as a foundation for understanding text by simply providing context and then also familiarity with the content. So, similarly, vocabulary knowledge gives students the tools to really decipher and comprehend the nuances within the text.
Speaker 3:And of course there are multiple kinds of vocabulary and a myriad of ways to teach it. But first we have kind of the three tiers. So tier one words are basic everyday vocabulary that students often know before they even start school. Then tier two words are high frequency words that are important for understanding multiple complex or, excuse me, more complex texts across many subjects and many topics. And then, finally, tier three words are specialized terms specific to particular fields or subjects. So in language arts class typically we focus on tier two words. Sometimes we're getting into those tier three words.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I feel like, if I remember correctly from back in my college programs, like your tier three words, they're super content, specific, right, so you're not seeing them as often as those tier two words, but they're still definitely present. So you can teach vocabulary through a system or routine like weekly instruction. You can also teach it in context, as students approach it in a text they're reading or maybe they will be reading, and at EB we like to use both approaches because students really need a lot of vocabulary input to broaden their knowledge. So, whatever type of vocabulary you're teaching and whatever approach you're using, whether it's a list of words each week or within the context of the story, it's important to give students multiple opportunities to interact with words. And again I reflect back to, like, my early years of teaching and I don't think I did a good job with this. You know like and I now know better. Whereas, like, I'd introduce the words and we'd go over them and occasionally I'd remind them of them, but to really be intentional every single day of using those words in our conversations and having even a word wall if that's useful, and getting students to use them, I think, gosh, what a difference that would have made. Yeah, so we know now, like I said, I know better that students really need to engage with a new word a number of times before it becomes part of their personal vocabularies. So the activity that we're going to share with you today is a really great way to do that vocabularies. So the activity that we're going to share with you today is a really great way to do that. So this is a prediction activity that focuses on tier two words, and this is great because prediction activities also aid reading comprehension. So this is kind of a two-for-one deal, which, hey, teachers love, right? You're getting more bang for your buck.
Speaker 2:So you're going to find these words in a story or a text that your students are going to be reading. So it does require a little bit of prep on your part. You preview the text, pull out some tier two words for them About 10 is a good place to start, and you want these to be words that your students are not familiar with. And if you are having trouble finding 10 words, go ahead and use fewer, like that's just a guide, right, it doesn't have to be the absolute. And ahead and use fewer, like that's just a guide, right, it doesn't have to be the absolute, and if you're reading a whole novel, maybe you just focus on a chapter or two at a time.
Speaker 2:Next, you're going to create a word list with definitions, and chat GPT is great for this, and here's like a little hack you can do. You can even paste in a section of the story or the text that you're reading into ChatGPT and you can use the command please find 10 words that my seventh graders may not know and create a list of these words with simple definitions, and then you know, boom, boom, boom, it spits it out for you. So then you can just read through that list, tweak it as needed, you know, use your teacher judgment and then you share the list with your students and you go through the words and the definitions together.
Speaker 3:I love it. This next part, then, is super simple, but it's also very fun. So put students together in pairs or small groups your discretion on that and then have them write a paragraph that predicts what the story will be about, or a scene they think they might see or that might happen in the story. Give them a number of words like maybe seven, excuse me that they must use in these predictions. You can differentiate by giving groups fewer or more words to use. That's an easy little scaffold there. You can even have them draw a picture to go with their paragraph or scene to add a creative element. That's fun. And then have students just share with the class.
Speaker 3:Again, a good reflection piece there. So talk about the predictions and if any ideas are shared among the groups, Don't forget to circulate, of course, as students are working just to answer questions and make sure students are using the words in context correctly. That's important. And then, at this point, students have, of course, read the words on the list. They've heard you define them, They've discussed them in their groups and they've planned them and used them in their writing. And then they've heard these words in context multiple times as different groups shared. So they've already got lots of encounters with these words.
Speaker 2:Yes, and again that is key Lots of encounters, and then there'll be more interaction as students read the story and we all know this happens, right, even middle schoolers who are too cool for school. Sometimes they're like, hey, that's one of our words. They're like oh, I remember that word from that game we played or that prediction we made. So they're going to start to notice those words and use them even more. And then at the end of the unit you can have groups go back to those predictions and see how much of them turned out to be accurate, maybe even vote on which one was the best prediction, who was the closest. Maybe you give them a small prize if you want to entice them a little bit more prize if you want to.
Speaker 3:You know, entice them a little bit more. Yeah, I love prizes that will motivate middle schoolers every time. And then, to extend this even further, one thing our teachers love to do is called words in the wild, where students bring in examples of the vocabulary words they learned in class and when they see them outside of school, you know they bring them in to talk about them. So they might see them in an ad or in a song or on TV or, you know, instagram or TikTok, whatever they're on, and that just adds even more stickiness to the word they're learning Because again, they're seeing it in context, in a real world way.
Speaker 2:Totally, and I think that's really where prizes come in, like even fifth graders. If you're like, I'm going to give you an extra credit point or a chance at the prize box or whatever. If you find it a word at the prize box or whatever, if you find it word in the wild, they're going to do it. You know it might not be as motivated if you're like, let's just do it for fun. And as we were talking through this, I thought of another activity, megan.
Speaker 2:This one was kind of cool and it's another way for students to interact with those same vocabulary words. So picture like musical chairs with your students, but you'd have to prep this a little bit in advance. So you take a piece of paper and let's say you did come up with 10 words for whatever text. So you would have 10 squares on this paper and you would have different like tasks in those squares. So one might be like write a synonym or write a definition, use it in a sentence, whatever. You have chat GPT help you do it. So you do that. Students are walking around the table, you have music playing and when you the music stops, you say a word and they have to go like do that word in one of the squares and it's just like fun movement, again practicing the words. It's another interaction.
Speaker 3:So that's a great idea. I'm even like remembering the episode we recorded together after you got back from Ron Clark too, with all those great at vocabulary activities. So like there's just so many things with vocab.
Speaker 2:We need to find that and add that to the show notes. I know Off the top of my head what that was. I think the title in the episode was even like takeaways from Ron Clark or something like that. Something like that. Yes, Gosh, they do vocabulary right at that school. I know, there's movements with every word.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yes.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:We'll try to find that and put that in the show notes, because that will also be a really helpful one for teachers For sure.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So we hope you find these activities helpful for teaching vocabulary in a really fun and engaging way. And just remember, if you're like taking one thing away from this episode, it's that the more opportunities students have to interact with new words, the more likely they will be to understand them and to remember them. So we really appreciate you joining us here today to talk about vocabulary, and make sure you join us for the next episode, where we're going to be focusing on a related topic, and I have to admit, when I first saw this, I was like what the heck is this? I don't know about you, megan, it's language structure. And I was like, if I was on like I don't know an interview or a talk show and someone said, so what is language structure? I went nowhere to begin, so we're going to break it down for you in the next episode. That'll be fun, it will. So have a great day, everyone, and we will see you soon. Bye, everybody.