CHAPTER 1
A Fresh Look at Vocabulary

What Is It?

Vocabulary instruction must be part of any social studies class. The words themselves can be looked at through the lens of the Three Tiers concept developed by Isabel L. Beck, Margaret G. McKeown, and Linda Kucan (2013, p. 9). Tier 1 words are common, everyday words that children pick up in daily conversation (happy, book, see). Tier 2 words are referred to in the Common Core Standards as "general academic words" that are found in readings across content areas, but not typically in conversation (contrast, summarize, consequence) (Common Core, 2010a, p. 42). Tier 3 words are content specific vocabulary (capitalism, infrastructure, longitude) (McKeown & Beck, 2004).

In addition to the Tier 3 content words that are usually included in instruction, we incorporate general academic words or Tier 2 words as well as social and emotional learning (SEL) terms (these SEL words are related to the social studies content, such as agency when teaching about the French Revolution).

We break down the process of teaching new vocabulary into three phases: accessing prior knowledge, seeking new information to build understanding, and practicing revision of definitions. We also cover how to build a strong list of terms for units of study that will push students beyond a traditional vocabulary list.

Why We Like It

Teaching vocabulary has often meant giving students a list of words and telling them to copy down the definitions provided by the teacher, dictionary, or textbook. This kind of activity tends to generate little student interest or lasting understanding of words. Vocabulary presented in this way often lacks needed context and background (Hedrick, Harmon, & Linerode, 2004, p. 105).

We like how our three-phase approach to vocabulary places the primary responsibility for creating definitions on the students and not the teacher. In this way, students develop more ownership of their learning as they work to create their own understandings of terms. Instead of being the source of knowledge, the teacher works as a facilitator of learning. This style of teaching is inclusive of diverse learners by providing space for students to share their own experiences and ideas as a way to help them understand new words.

Supporting Research

Beginning a study of words by encouraging students to consider their prior knowledge - or what is known - before transitioning to new learning - what is unknown - can help to develop word comprehension. Research shows that when students link new information to what they already know, they can better retain the new material (Radboud University Nijmegen, 2014).

Additionally, repeated exposure to vocabulary, along with seeing these words in context, has been shown to improve student comprehension (Biemiller & Boote, 2006).

As we mentioned earlier, a common practice of teaching vocabulary is to give students a list of words, direct them to copy their definitions, and use the words in a sentence. However, researchers Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey state, "This limited exposure to words and phrases in decontextualized situations has not proven to be effective, nor is it of a sufficient intensity" (Fisher & Frey, 2014a, p. 595). They add, "All learning is social; vocabulary instruction should leverage interactions between teacher, student, and text ." (Fisher & Frey, 2014a, p. 598). The interactive activities described in this chapter can support this kind of instruction.

Common Core Connections

The Craft and Structure strand of the Common Core Standards for Social Studies and History describes the importance of acquiring vocabulary. Students are asked to "determine the meaning of words and phrases in the text" (Common Core, 2010b).

The Text Type and Purpose strand of the Writing Standards provides guidelines for students to use content-specific language to make and explain written arguments (Common Core, 2010c). The activities in this chapter can help build a thorough understanding of content area language.

Social Studies Connections

According to the National Council for the Social Studies, vocabulary instruction is especially important because an education without it "can lead to lower literacy levels and . increase the achievement gap" (National Council for the Social Studies, 2017, "rationale"). We prefer the term opportunity gap to achievement gap (Wells, 2016) since we believe all students have the ability to achieve, but may face socioeconomic challenges or other barriers beyond their control.

Application

Instead of a single lesson plan, this chapter begins by explaining the process we use to build a word list for a unit of study. Then, we share how to divide the teaching of vocabulary into three phases that can be applied to build comprehension: Accessing Prior Knowledge, Building Understanding, and Revising Definitions. We include variations for each of the three phases in this chapter.

It's important to remember that we don't use every variation every time. Depending on time restraints and learning objectives, each step could take a few minutes or a whole period. We ensure, however, that we do utilize at least one instructional strategy from each phase during a unit of study.

BUILDING A WORD LIST

In our experience, developing a good word list is the critical first step of successful vocabulary instruction. This is not a list we give to students - rather, this is a list that we use to develop our lessons. This section focuses on identifying the words for this list. The next section will discuss different ways to introduce these terms to students.

We tend to keep our vocabulary list for any given unit to around 15 words. We choose this number of words based on research showing that working memory, which is discussed more in Chapter 6: Mnemonics, has an upper limit of between 10 and 20 items (Bick & Rabinovich, 2009, pp. 218101-218103). These 15 words are broken down into three different categories - Tier 3 (content words), Tier 2 (general academic words), and our bonus words, which are SEL terms (see Chapter 19: Social and Emotional Learning).

The first 8-10 words on our list are content focused, or Tier 3. For example, we include content terms like tropical and deforestation when studying Brazil. Another five or six are Tier 2 vocabulary or general academic words. These terms don't often come up in conversation, but appear frequently in academic texts across many domains. They are important to include because students need to understand them to be able to complete social studies thinking and writing tasks. Examples of these words include analysis and culture. After uploading our unit texts, we often use the Academic Word Finder feature on the Achieve the Core website, https://achievethecore.org. This tool helps to locate and choose appropriately leveled Tier 2 words that exist in our unit texts. It's also easy to find lists of Tier 2 words online.

The third category of words we include in our vocabulary lists relate to SEL and also connect to the unit. We put one or two of these words on each list in an effort to integrate the "soft skills" that our students need to succeed in school and other aspects of life. We have discovered connections between most social studies units and SEL terms. For example, the French Revolution vocabulary list we discuss later in this chapter contains the terms growth mindset and agency. We use the term growth mindset to point out that many of the French had to adopt this type of thinking in order to believe that their lives could improve through effort. The term agency is the concept of feeling like you have the power to make change and impact the decisions that affect your life. This perspective was obviously another important conviction held by many participants in the French Revolution. For more information on these concepts and their importance to our students, see Chapter 19: Social and Emotional Learning.

ACCESSING PRIOR KNOWLEDGE

This section will discuss three different ways teachers can facilitate accessing prior knowledge in order to acquire new vocabulary. Typically, these Accessing Prior Knowledge activities are done before exposing students to unit texts.

Accessing prior knowledge is an important learning strategy in itself (Alber, 2011) and is especially helpful when used to jump-start the process of learning a word. We start our vocabulary instruction by having students think about any connections they can make to the word. For example, the word tropical is seen in Table 1.1: Unit Vocabulary Graphic Organizer. Often, when students see this word, they think of tropical fruit punch or tropical-flavored candy. We ask them to consider what makes these items tropical. Students can, through questioning, determine that tropical refers to the types of fruits used as flavors in these items. We push students to consider what these fruits may have in common or what is different about them compared to fruit that is not tropical. In this way, they are much closer to determining the definition for this term and often come up with something about the warm weather required to grow...