VOCAB AHEAD

As students learn more words they become better readers, writers, and speakers. In the last several years my district has placed an added emphasis on vocabulary acquisition with the adoption of the Literacy by Design language arts program. Every theme contains 10 new vocubulary words that students will copy along with the definition into vocabulary journals along with drawing a picture that illustrates the words. Lessons in each them address the new words, encouraging students to create graphic organizers and write sentences to help them remember the words' meanings and uses in sentences.
After a few years of using this curriculum, we found that many students were not acquiring as much new vocabulary as we'd wished, so we looked at the assessements, as well as our own teaching practices, to try to determine where and when the learning broke down. What we discovered is that those teachers that addressed vocabulary every day in classes, working with students to apply newly learned words into their work on a regular basis, had the highest scores on the assessments. Those teacher that simply had their students do the initial lesson in their vocabulary journals did not see the same improvements. Just like the saying goes, students that didn't regularly use the new learning, lost the new learning. How then, can a teacher improve vocabulary scores when class time is limited?  Programs like VocabAhead are tools to help teachers and students do just that.

VocabAhead (found at http://www.vocabahead.com/) is an online tool that contains a database of hundreds of vocabulary words, including their meaning, an illustration, as well as an audio for both so that students can hear pronunciation and the word's correct usage. Teachers can create their own custom lists for students to study, apply, and practice before being assessed on what they'd learned. VocabAhead is a great start but most likely not the only resource a teacher will need to address all of the words he/she wants learned in the classroom in a year. For one, the program addresses words that are for the 6th grade and up, so many elementary teachers will not be able to use the majority of indexed words. That said, I found several that are not only vocabulary words addressed by our LbD curriculum but also words that I use myself with the class throughout the year. For my own room, I created a list after searching through every word in the site's database, about 50 words in all.

I plan to start using this program with students that have mastered the assigned vocabulary and want to learn new words. The words can also be used for students that don't understand a word I used in my own lecture but is found on VocabAhead's list. For them I can assign them the task of finding, learning, and reporting on the word instead of just telling them the answer myself.

Quizzes on VocabAhead's site allow students to review what they've learned. They are self generated and listed as selected response. I tried taking a 10-question quiz myself on my new words and did fairly well:

ISTE Standards for Students

(Click on the link above for descriptions of the following standards this tool can address.)

       Creativity and innovation (c)

       Communication and collaboration (b)

       Research and information fluency (b, c, d)

       Critical thinking, problem solving, and decision making (b, c)

       Digital citizenship (a, b, c, d)

       Technology operations and concepts (a, b, c, d)

ISTE Standards for Teachers

(Click on the link above for descriptions of the following standards this tool can address.)

       Facilitate and Inspire student learning and creativity (a, b, c)

       Design and develop digital age learning experiences and assessments (a, b, c)

       Model digital age work and learning (a, b, c, d)

       Promote and model digital citizenship and responsibility (a, b, c)

       Engage in professional growth and leadership (d)

Sources:  http://www.vocabahead.com/