Literary Action Research Team
Focuses on Vocabulary Development
This year, the Literacy Action Team at Grant Wood Elementary is focusing on vocabulary development. Team members meet monthly to review current research findings on vocabulary growth and to share specific instructional strategies that can be used in the classroom.
To help students expand their written and oral vocabularies, all grade levels are now using vocabulary kits that include a list of words to be introduced each week, along with student notebooks and picture cards. These notebooks feature sentence starters, crossword puzzles, graphic organizers, and other activities to help students explore their vocabulary words in more depth. According to Grant Wood Reading Coach Julie Staskal, the kits are very popular with teachers and students.
Besides promoting the use of the kits in the classroom, the Literacy Action Research Team has been busy researching other ways that staff can help students improve their vocabulary. At one of the group’s meetings, team members reviewed an article regarding the value of read-alouds in the classroom. Though read-alouds have typically been used in the lower grades, researchers have found this practice to be beneficial to older students as well. This means that even at the higher grades teachers should consider reading out loud to their students to expose them to words that they may not be able to identify in print.
The group also discussed the importance of teaching word morphology – roots, prefixes, and affixes. This strategy is useful at both the elementary and secondary levels.