The Research on Vocabulary Instruction with Margaret McKeown

Episode 250

In this episode, we’re joined by Margaret McKeown, a leading researcher in vocabulary and language development, to explore what effective vocabulary instruction really looks like in practice.

Margaret helps us unpack common misconceptions about vocabulary teaching, including the pressure to ensure students “master” every word and the belief that vocabulary instruction must always be formal and pre-planned. She explains the power of informal instruction words “running through the classroom” and why repeated exposure over time supports deep word learning.

We also dive into:

• What learning words in context actually means (and what it doesn’t)
• How to think about vocabulary tiers without treating them like a rulebook
• When vocabulary should be taught (before, during, or after reading)
• The connection between vocabulary knowledge and comprehension
• Better ways to assess vocabulary beyond traditional tests

Margaret reminds us that vocabulary learning is more like climbing a ladder than crossing a finish line. Not every word requires deep instruction, but thoughtful, strategic choices can make a meaningful impact on comprehension.

If vocabulary instruction has ever felt overwhelming, this conversation offers clarity, reassurance, and practical insight for making it manageable and effective.

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Transcript

Why Vocabulary Feels Hard

Lori 0:21

Vocabulary plays an important role in reading comprehension, but it's also one of the most misunderstood parts of literacy instruction. Teachers are expected to teach a lot of words, often with very little time, and it's not always clear what matters most.

Melissa 0:38

Today we're joined by Margaret McCowan, a leading researcher in vocabulary and language development. In this conversation, we tackle some of the biggest misconceptions about teaching vocabulary and explore what actually helps word knowledge grow over time.

Lori 0:54

Hi, teacher friends. I'm Lori. And I'm Melissa. We are two educators who want the best for all kids, and we know you do too.

Melissa 1:04

We worked together in Baltimore when the district adopted a new literacy curriculum.

Lori 1:09

We realized there was so much more to learn about how to teach reading and writing.

Meet Researcher Margaret McKeown

Melissa 1:14

Lori and I can't wait to keep learning with you today.

Lori 1:20

Hi, Matty. Welcome to the podcast. We're so happy to have you.

Margaret McKeown 1:24

Hello, Melissa and Lori. It's uh fun to be here. I'm looking forward to this.

Melissa 1:29

No, I can't believe we get to talk to you about vocabulary.

Lori 1:31

It's really we've we've had you on our list for so long. And then when you, I think on on Twitter, then maybe X now, you shared something in about our book, about the vocabulary chapter. And I was like, I I like teared up. I was like, oh my gosh, this is such an honor.

Melissa 1:49

Yeah, and we're honored that you're here today.

Margaret McKeown 1:52

Thank you. I love anybody who lets me talk about vocabulary for an hour.

Words In The Air, Not A Block

Melissa 1:56

Yeah. Please. We can't wait. Let's jump in. So we wanted to talk a little bit first about, you know, what we hear a lot from, oh, I mean, we were teachers, we know this, we hear from teachers. Time is like, you know, there's just never enough time to do everything you want to do as a teacher. And vocabulary instruction can sometimes get kind of pushed aside. Um, and you know, what we wanted to talk to you about was that vocabulary doesn't always have to be this like long, formal, you know, have a block for vocabulary time. So can you talk a little bit about that? Like you've talked about it's almost like words are just running through your classroom, which I love that image. But what does that really look like in practice if you're not doing this like vocabulary lesson?

Margaret McKeown 2:41

Yeah, I mean, it's so true. The uh opportunities for informal uh instruction or informal interaction around words is so important because really the goal of vocabulary is to get kids to have these words as part of their language so they use them, so they recognize them in context. So, you know, you can do all kinds of things to drop in words, um, and it it can be words that have already been introduced in the classroom, and you um suddenly think of a new way for them to be used, or you challenge kids to use them, or it can be um a new word that just happens to come to you that you think kids would be interested in. So, you know, you might hear something going on in the hall and going, did anybody just hear that commotion in the hall? And you don't even have to define the word at that point. They've heard they heard it, they'll they know what you mean, and you can just talk about it. Um then you can bring it up again and say, who uh who was causing a commotion over there in the corner? And you've got something going. You know, uh you can talk about something that um kids are involved in or reading about, like the Olympics. You might say, Who watched the Olympics last night? Uh did anybody see anything dynamic going on? Did anybody see anything innovative? What was innovative about, you know, some skaters or some skiers? And get kids to embed words into things they're thinking about anyway. And I think the the grounding of all this is the teacher developing for him or herself a kind of mindset around vocabulary. So just sort of tune your mind to being aware of words and the way they're used, whether it's in a book you're reading or newspaper articles you're reading or conversation that's going on at school. Um just think about words and what they add to the context and try to bring that same awareness and mindset into the classroom and get kids to respond to it. Um there are other, you know, slightly more formal ways where you could start every day with a vocabulary warm-up and just do something, you know, have it be built around something like example non-example or questions like would you rather? Uh, or which would, which would you, which would you rather eliminate, uh, homework or uh rainy days, and have kids respond to that and you know, talk about why, and you can make it as short or long as as you want. So that's really the the basic of it is just have words in the classroom available to kids as often as you can. You know, I think once that kind of thing starts in the classroom, the kids pick up on it really easily. Um, an example we used in one of our books was a teacher walks by a child and says, James, you're being so industrious this morning. I really like that. And of course, all the kids like, oh, what's James doing? They immediately know that he's doing something good. How can I be more industrious, right? Yes, so exactly. And the thing that happened in this classroom was over the next week, kids are like, Am I being industrious? You know, look at how industrious I am. That the kids just nailed it, you know.

The Ladder Of Word Learning

Melissa 5:47

Yeah, we we talk a lot about we have this one example that we always go back to from a teacher that was on our podcast, and he he always uses the word concur in his classroom in the same way you're saying, right? He doesn't even tell them what it means. He's just like, Do you concur? Like, you know, they're they're talking about something. It's like, do you concur with this, with what they said? And they just pick up on what it means. We wrote that students need to interact with a word around 12 times in order for it to stick. And I'm just curious about you know, the way that we're talking about words right now with these, like kind of, you know, not necessarily like instructional examples the way you would think of it. Do those count in these however many times the 12 times you need it to stick for vocabulary?

Margaret McKeown 6:28

Totally, absolutely. I mean, yeah, anytime you know, a word gets a a tick of use or meaning, that definitely counts. You know, we calculated that from um research we had done, but and it's it's a good figure to have in your head, but it's not hard and fast. Um, words differ. Some words you're gonna need to see a lot more because the meaning is really flexible, uh, different nuances and senses will come up. But it's almost like every kick that a word gets, so every time there's another connection made, another use uh in the mind, is gonna help you unlock some more contexts, let's say. So think of you know, a word concur and all the context that that that word might occur in. And, you know, what will it take for you to understand, be able to understand all of them? I mean, who knows? But each time you hear that word and it gets used, there there are probably going to be some more contexts that are that become available to you that are accessible because you know that word. So it has to be thought about in that way that, yeah, 12 is probably a good guess. Doesn't mean you don't know the word at all if you've only had five or eight, but it also doesn't guarantee that you're gonna you know that word forever every time it's used.

Melissa 7:59

And this is where you kind of talked about vocabulary learning being more of a ladder than a finish line. And you know, as teachers, we want to like get to that finish line. It's hard, it's hard to live on that ladder.

Sound, Spelling, Meaning Together

Margaret McKeown 8:12

Exactly. It really is. You visualize it as a ladder that any encounter with a word uh moves you up, maybe a rung on the ladder. And it's almost like though we don't really know where the top of the ladder is. But it doesn't matter because the higher you get, the more likely you are to be able to use that word in writing, to you know, be able to unlock context really quickly where it's used, and you know you have to get a good ways up the ladder before you can really say a word is known. An important part of knowing a word is to understand that there are three aspects, and this comes from the um perfetti's lexical quality hypothesis, that uh the word is represented in our minds has a phonological component, knowing what it sounds like, an orthographic component, knowing what it looks like, and a semantic component, knowing its meaning. All those interact. So if you know a word's meaning but you don't know really how to pronounce it, your representation is going to be degraded, and you're not as likely to be able to access that meaning quickly if you see the word in context. So all those three components play off of each other and help each other to the extent that it makes a word more accessible. And when we read, we have to so quickly come up with something meaningful about every word that's in that text, or comprehension begins to break down. So having those three aspects really strongly is important, which also says when you work with words, you should show them to kids, you should have them say the word. Um, so it builds on all those different aspects of the representation you have in your mind, and therefore makes it just a more useful word for you.

Lori 10:07

Oh, I love that. Mati, I was gonna ask you about that, that connection between sound and spelling and meaning, because you know, I think sometimes that, you know, we know that that's what it takes to like orthographically map a word, but and vocabularies, sometimes we just think it's meaning, but really it's all three um put together. And I want to kind of give an example if it's okay. Melissa, I'm gonna walk us through and I'd love for you to jump in. Um, remember a couple of weeks ago, Matty, when we were preparing for this episode, um, I said to Melissa, I said, I I feel like I have the perfect example for this. The first house that I I bought ever, um, you know, my like I think like my second year teaching, I was like, I'm gonna buy this tiny little town house. And I moved, it was very old and I moved in, and these floors were beautiful wood floors, and and every single person who came in were like, Oh, I love your parquet floors. Love your parquet floors. So I had a visual representation of parquet flooring. I had never seen the word in print, I had only heard it. I had said it because then I started telling people they were parquet floors. Um, and so Melissa and I were preparing for this and specifically this part, and I said, So I still don't know how to spell the word parquet. And I can can use this word in a sentence, I can identify. So then she and I really quickly like, and she didn't know what it looked like.

Melissa 11:32

She could spell it, which is very I knew how to spell it, but I couldn't tell you what it was. Like I couldn't tell you, I couldn't pick out a parquet floor from a different kind of flooring.

Lori 11:40

Yeah. So then we pulled up a couple videos, you know, a couple explainers. Yeah, exactly. And like we I said, Oh, I really like the herringbone parquet. And then we learned about the different kinds of parquet, and then we Melissa was like, I'm gonna spell it for you. You know, she spelled it for me. And I said, I saw it in a book, though, when I was reading I a couple years ago, I saw it in a book, and I knew it was parquet because they were talking about flooring and there was no other word it could possibly be, right? And so even though I had never seen it in print, I could, you know, I but I it still didn't stick. I still a year later couldn't spell it, right? Um, so yeah, I was somewhere high on the ladder-ish, but not perhaps all the way at the top with parquet. And I imagine there's a lot of words where we're not maybe at the top a lot of the time. I mean, so you know, I I think that's kind of like this idea of like, as teachers, we feel this pressure to like master every word deeply, but the idea just to get students on the ladder of vocabulary learning is a really good one.

Margaret McKeown 12:43

Oh, absolutely. It's huge. And a couple more things about that. I mean, it's interesting. So with the word parquet, as I remember, it's P-A-R-Q-U-E-T, right? So a couple things. Um, you know, you say it, you're still not all the way up the ladder, but there's probably not that much more you can know about parquet unless you're going to go into the business of putting in parquet flooring. So it's okay. Um, but also another reason you probably recognize the word in print is because you know that Q-U-E-T can say A or K. And um people might not who run into that word and still wouldn't recognize it. So there's also that component of just knowing more about language and the sound system of our wacky language of English that helped you know that. So all these things kind of fit together. Um it's funny, I I ran across an example of sort of knowing that how a word sounds this morning when I was reading the paper. It talked about somebody descending into an underground garage. I thought that's interesting because you don't have to know the word descend to understand what that means. They underground garage, yeah, they're down there. But if you don't know the word descend, especially if you don't know how to pronounce it, you might trip over that in trying to read that sentence. And that's gonna interrupt your comprehension. So there are all sorts of ways that knowing, not knowing, knowing some part, some things about a word can affect your comprehension.

Lori 14:15

Yeah, and Mati, what I think we're kind of getting at is that it's still valuable to introduce students to words, even if they're not gonna be at that highest ladder wrong, right? That just getting that exposure is important and making sure that we're connecting some sort of sound to spelling to meaning at any point possible. Is that, do you think that's accurate?

Context Clues Versus Context Use

Margaret McKeown 14:38

That's absolutely true and should be said over and over to teachers. Uh again, any kind of encounter you have with a word that um makes it, makes your connection stronger, deeper in any of those aspects is likely to help you out at some future time. Uh, whether it's about uh knowing that word particularly, or like in the case of descend, is just it ends up not being an obstacle if you know how to say that word as you're reading, as you're reading along the text. And the thing about um, you know, vocabulary, it's it's really all about the only reason we learn words and word meanings is so that we can understand language. You know, there's spelling bees, there could be vocabulary bees, but that's not going to get you anywhere. You know, you have to have these words embedded in language that you're trying to work with, either to understand or express, and that's what you're going for. And and any piece of knowledge about a word is likely to help you in in that endeavor along the way.

Lori 15:39

Yeah. I mean, even though I said parquet when I read it in my head, you know what I mean? And then I was like, that can't be it. It's gotta be parquet. You know, I went right back, but totally, yeah, exactly. It helped me and it helped me have that visual as I was reading. And I mean, I'm even thinking about your example with descend, you know, if a student came to that word and read descend and then was like, oh, I think it's descend, right? To flex it, that's still great. We're still building that vocabulary knowledge of that word.

Melissa 16:08

Yeah, I'm wondering if we can shift a little. You mentioned context a little bit, and I feel like I feel like we go two different ways with this. Uh, I'm just gonna bring them both up. One, one is like, I think when I hear context and vocabulary, I think of context clues, and I feel like we used to teach context clues as if like if I teach them how to do context clues, then they'll know every word that's out there because they'll just use their context clues, and that would be great. But then there's also learning words in context, which I think is a little more valuable. So, can do you want to talk about both of those?

Margaret McKeown 16:39

Absolutely, because the context thing that's that's been thrown around since um, well, before I did my dissertation, because that's what I did it on.

Lori 16:48

Um, wait, when are we allowed to ask you when that was? Can't ask her when. Sure. 1983. I'm only asking because I feel like that's I learned so many times, like, okay, this is like find the word in context when I was in school. And I remember thinking, okay, well, it could be like one of 10 other meanings, right? Like one of 10. And you really sometimes it's not rich enough to learn in context. So I'm interested to hear what you have. Are you going to remember everything from the dissertation?

Choosing Words With Tiers In Mind

Margaret McKeown 17:15

Oh, no, absolutely not. No, but what so a couple of things. Uh, one of the very first uh studies that Isabel Beck and I ever did when I joined her um in Pittsburgh was to look at basil programs and how they teach, you know, what how they set up a story, what they do. And they had this thing about context clues. Well, what they would offer, you know, before reading when they're quote, preteaching the word, were stupid contexts that obviously you would get the meaning from. He descended by going down the stairs. Oh, I wonder what descend means. So and it's not gonna come up like that in normal text. Teachers aren't gonna use a word and yeah, and and and tell you what the word means every time they use it. That's just stupid. So we said this isn't gonna help kids understand uh the words, and frequently uh there isn't any clue to the uh the meaning of the word, or it just gives you such a general direction of the meaning, it's not gonna be helpful. And so we actually took context from basal readers, gave them to adults, and blacked out the word and said, what do you think the word is that goes there? And found that only 50% of the time could adult readers reading passages for fourth and sixth graders tell what the word was, because the context just don't give it to you. Um so what's important is, yeah, first of all, words in context. Anytime you start working with a word, there should be a context right away. So you introduce a word, you say, um afford means having enough money to be able to pay for something. And then right away, hit a context. Uh if you want to buy a car, make sure it's a model you can afford. And then, next step right away, bring in the kids. What's something you'd like to be able to afford? And th those three things explain the meaning, context, get kids involved. Do it as often as you can as a as a threesome. And um so kids need to work with, hear, see, um, generate contexts as part of uh vocabulary learning. But the other thing is that you know, context is is really right on the edge between vocabulary and comprehension, because um what you want kids to develop as they become readers is the idea that when they read a text, ideas fit together. An author builds something meaningful as they're presenting you with these different sentences and words. So even though you might not always be able to tell what a word means from context, it should make sense and it should um, you know, words should uh help you understand the context, but it the context should also um fit fit together with other pieces of the context. Um there might be some obvious uh context in a um uh a text. Let's say it says um the restaurant was left with an excess of potatoes. People just weren't ordering them. That's pretty clear. So you could either stop there or after reading, say, this is what it said in the text. So what do you think excess means? What was going on at the restaurant? So they see that sent those sentences fit together. And in and other times in texts there might be um, you know, it's not obvious uh what what a word means, but because of the way that the text is is you know occurring, you realize like a word um like impoverished, you realize, oh, this is a town that's really poor. Talking about those kinds of things, you know, going back to a text and talking about certain sentences, and what else in the text gave us the idea that this was a very poor area? Um you know, what else in the text gave you the idea that that bridge was dilapidated? And have kids put together the clues because, again, it's not necessarily that they're gonna, you want them to figure out that word meaning, but you want them to see that the author is building some ideas that that fit together. Because sometimes when kids are really struggling with comprehension, and you'll ask them like what a word means, and they just bring in this meaning that, like, what? You know, what would what would the text have anything to do with it? Why would the word mean that? You want them to see that hopefully, unless the author's really, you know, goofing with you, it's it's gonna all make sense and fit together.

Lori 22:08

Yeah, the word learning is not isolated or divorced from comprehension. Yeah, altogether. I like that. Um so like kind of to I think to like that. Point when we think about learning words, sometimes we try to categorize them and put them in different tiers, which is helpful to an extent, right? But but I don't think it's a like a rule book or uh a playbook. And uh I guess rule book is the right word, not a playbook. So maybe it's not a rule book. Um but if we think about these levels, right? Tier one, just like basic everyday words, tier two, high utility cross-curricular words. I'll give an example, like that word concur, we said earlier. Um, and then tier three, like more less uh frequent but domain-specific words. So words you're gonna hear in context, such as peninsula or ecosystem. Um, when we think about tiers, Mati, how do you think we should think about them and what's the real purpose behind them?

When To Teach: Before, During, After

Margaret McKeown 23:13

Yeah. So tears are the development of tears that um Isabel Beck and I created really was kind of an oh come on response to our very good colleagues and friends, Dick Anderson and Bill Nagy, who um famously published this study about how there are 145,000 words in the English language, therefore you couldn't teach them all directly. So they were they were trying to counter our position, which was to say that direct vocabulary instruction is useful. So they said that, and we said to them, oh come on, we don't want to teach all the words in the language. And then we started to think about well, how do we explain this in a really clear, accessible way? The idea first that we're not trying to teach even close to all the words, but also what are the words and how do you how do you identify what they are? So Tears was always a rather informal heuristic. I mean, we could have been much more analytic and made you know five or six categories and really cut it up, and but we didn't want to do that. We just wanted it to be something that, again, kind of created a mindset about words, a way to think about words, to think about, you know, look at a word and and should I teach this word? And then you just examine it from the perspective of is this a word kids are hearing a lot in conversation anyway? I'm not gonna, I I can just sort of repeat it, I don't have to define it. Is it a word that we don't we don't hear that much in comprehension, but it seems to turn up a lot in text. Ooh, that's one I want to teach, versus ones that um are much more limited in use, and you're gonna want to teach it when you are working in that discipline in science or social studies or something like that. So it was just, in a way, it was kind of a a quick and dirty, and it was never meant as, you know, look at all these words and put them in and put them in tiers. That doesn't matter. The point is to um think about whether it's a good word to teach.

Lori 25:16

Yeah, I like that. That makes sense. And truly, I think the when we talked with uh the the teacher who we gave the concur example, uh, which is Sean Morrissey, he's a fifth-grade teacher. He's great. Um, but he was, you know, he was really talking about exactly what you just said, that idea that the tears help him think about words and which words to teach and which words his students might need some support in like hearing more frequently and maybe hearing with a synonym, right? So he might say, Do you concur? Do you agree with Melissa? Right. And just intentionally use that over and over again, versus words that he needs to really spend some time as the teacher teaching and you know, defining and helping students work a little bit more with. Um, but I I'm curious for your thoughts on this one. Like, if we know that teachers have limited time for all of this, and if we're thinking about tiers, just because I think it's an easy way for teachers to think about words, which tiers do you think deserve the most attention and why?

Assessing Vocabulary Without Scantrons

Margaret McKeown 26:19

Well, it's all it's always going to be tier two for uh instruction. And you know, even tier two has a range of words in it, and and words have a range of difficulty and use. So even within that, you have to really use your own judgment. And again, this is a part of really tuning your mind to words and understanding that some words um, you know, like commotion, they're gonna hear that a couple of times or concur, hear that a couple of times, and they've got a really strong idea of what it means. Other words, like something like, you know, resilient, um, kids are gonna probably have to have a lot more experience with before they can really feel confident in using it, or they can really even explain what um what a context in a text using it means. So I think it's always a good idea for teachers to think of words in, I don't know, maybe layers where you always have some set of words that you're really working with and try to get understand kids to understand at a deeper level. And those are words that are going to be um more abstract. So they have different nuances, different senses of meaning when when you see them in different contexts. Like something like uh resilient or you know, fluctuate. Um, whereas the you can have other words that um just sort of float in and out of the classroom. Just and it's you know, if you think of it, return to them. But if if it doesn't, it's fine to have just one uh one encounter with it. Again, it's that you know step on the on the wrong. But for at least some of the words that are worked with in the classroom, especially if you have this set at a deeper level, there should be some records. Um, you know, whether it's a list of the words of the week or two weeks that's always up in the classroom, and then those lists are taken down, but they're available somewhere in a corner of the classroom. I think it's really nice to have something like a recipe box where you have uh an index card for each word that you've worked with that has a quick explanation of the meaning and a context for it. Kids can go back to that and refresh their their idea or invite them to add another context. You can use it in all sorts of different ways. You can say, okay, we're gonna do some writing today, give them a topic, and then say, somebody go and pick three words out of our box, and I want you to see if you can use those words in your writing. So words should really stick around. Um, and again, it's having kids see them and say them that adds to their understanding. So also when you're working with words and you're saying um, you know, something like, uh, which would you rather eliminate um rainy days or homework? Make sure the kids don't just answer that, but say, I'd eliminate, mm. So again, everybody else in the room is hearing it, that one student is saying it. Make sure they get all those hits as much as possible.

Lori 29:42

Yeah, I like that. I um one thing that I started doing as a parent is doing like little word um rings. So getting those, uh getting index cards and poking, you know, poking the hole through. Kind of the same idea as a recipe box, but instead just having it be on a little keychain ring and flip through. And that seemed to be a helpful way to do that. But same idea. I love it. I I like the idea that words need to stick around in our classrooms and really like within us, right? So how can we bring that to life um on the regular with our kiddos?

Margaret McKeown 30:17

Yeah, yeah, and and you can even have um, depending on how elaborate you want to be, each each student, and depending on the grade level, can have a vocabulary notebook where they record the word and um a sentence about it uh so they can keep track on their own. I mean, all these things, again, just can make for stronger, deeper representations.

Melissa 30:41

Mati, I'm curious about, I'm thinking about like actually I want to teach words now. This is not a word that I want to like just, you know, touch on and get them one rung up the ladder, but there's like a really important word in this book, a tier two word. Let's say it's the word surrender, right? And that is really important to the context of the book and like what happens. And I've always been taught, you know, there's always these like what you do before reading, during reading, and after reading. And a lot of times the before reading is to teach that important vocabulary up front. Is that the best way to do it? Are there some are there better ways? We're just curious what what you know from the research.

Scores, Pressure, And What Counts

Margaret McKeown 31:22

Yeah, so uh yeah, again, the before reading thing I think comes so strongly from reading programs, basal reading programs, because you know, they like having a structured lesson and it looks good as teachers look through. Oh, you know, kids get to learn these words before they read. Well, they don't. Um unless kids are reading independently, I would say don't introduce, you know, almost never introduce any words before reading for several reasons. Um is it's not likely that the word is still gonna be in the kids' head when they meet it in the text. Two, if you're doing multiple words, they're gonna get confused. They won't know which one meant that. And three, if you give more than a brief amount of information, if you take in for if you go beyond what's happening in the text and to provide more general information about a word, it's gonna be confusing. You should always think that when kids go into a text, the goal is comprehension. Now, during the reading, if vocabulary is gonna help comprehension, then touch on it. But again, the best way is for if a teacher's reading with a group to hit on a word as it's encountered in the text. Um, to say, what was your word again that you wanted to teach? Surrender. Surrender, okay. So when you hit surrender in the text, you say surrender. That means to sort of get to give up and say, I'm done, you win. And then just go on. Don't stop there, don't quiz kids, just go on. And then at after reading, come back to that context and say, so what did it mean that these people surrendered? And then add other context, get kids to talk about the word. But during the reading, the only goal should be comprehension. And you only hit on a word if you think it's gonna interfere with kids' comprehension. So the before reading, I would almost never do, unless, as I say, kids are gonna be reading independently, and then you've got to give them a little something. But try to make it brief and try to make it just in terms of what the text is about. So it doesn't even have to, in fact, it shouldn't even be a definition. It should just be something that contextualizes that word. Like, you know, these these this family is impoverished, it meant they they couldn't afford the things that they needed. And that's it.

Melissa 33:58

You have me thinking like you know, if you do it beforehand and you're trying to have a conversation about the word, you know, if the students don't know the word, they really they have nothing to connect it to. It's just like what okay. Um, or you have the students who already know the word, or the ones who are having the conversation with you, are like, I know that. Um, but if you wait until after, like you said, you know you have the context of what they read and something that they can then connect it to and really like make sense of it and actually have it stick in their brains. So that makes so much sense. I know that I've I've always kind of been taught to do it before, like you said, so then when they get to it in the text, they won't be confused. But as long as you're there guiding with them, you can help them along the way and then dive deeper at the end. I love that.

Margaret McKeown 34:46

Yeah, that's so much more um, well, a reliable procedure. But again, if if kids are reading on their own, then yeah, if you give them a little bit of information like that, there's a chance. Some of them are gonna understand um that when they get to it. Um but in general, yeah, it's it's doing it after having that context because again, you're working, you're working all the time on comprehension. What your goal is is to get them to understand that text and then after reading to build that uh um integration between word and and context.

Making Word Learning Joyful

Lori 35:25

Yeah, I, you know, I'm thinking about that ladder again, and I want to go back to it because I think it's just like the perfect visual to bring in here that all of our students, like let's say the word is surrender, and this is I'm just making it up, like a third grade text that we're reading, and it's really important, and they have to know this word in order to understand, really comprehend the outcome of what we're reading today in class. That if we're a different parts on the ladder when we come into class, maybe there's students who aren't even on the ladder for that word, right? So if we do it before, we're not really giving that the students who aren't on the ladder a lot of context. If students are on the ladder, maybe they have a different interpretation of that word, you know, or not as deep understanding. But if we wait until in the middle, we just do a quick definition and then afterwards everybody has read that part. We all, then we're all on the ladder together and we're somewhere on the ladder. We're gonna actually deepen and extend each other's knowledge of that word as we climb up the ladder together, regardless of where we are. And that's what I think is important. Like we're not actually gonna drag anyone back down the ladder, right? We're gonna we're gonna help them continue to climb, and then we're gonna bolster the ones at the bottom up even more. Um, that I think that's really interesting.

Margaret McKeown 36:39

That's a really good point, having everybody together on it at the end. And you kind of touched on something else too, that if kids have a misunderstanding about a word, that's unlikely to be cleared up by you popping them some definition before the text begins. There that studies have shown if they have a misrepresentation of the word, that's gonna stick with them unless you know a bunch more is done, several, several steps up the ladder are taken. So, you know, say you have a uh kid who has run into the word surrender, but only in uh you know Western movies, so they think it has to do with you know cowboys and Indians fighting. Um and that's gonna stick with them. And they're gonna think that, and if you can tell them, you can give them a definition for it before they read, it's not gonna help. But if then they see this context where that wasn't what was going on at all, and you bring up surrender, even if they're still momentarily confused at that point in the text, it will get straightened out because as you say, afterwards, then you have the richer discussion and kids bringing different knowledge to bear, and you're bringing the knowledge of the whole text to bear.

Lori 37:47

Oh, that's so good. I feel like too, something I I don't want to leave this conversation without talking about, um, because you kind of are I think we're like talking, like dancing around it a little bit here in terms of like comprehension and talking about the whole text. I I think we can talk about like assessment and vocabulary, because you know, when we think about, okay, well, great, like everybody's on the ladder and we're learning the words, but like how do we actually assess them if they're all at different points on the ladder? Um, you know, I I think about the way that I was taught vocabulary, which was like given these lists of words, memorize them, come in, take a test, and then I would promptly forget them, very much like spelling, right? So, what are some better ways than just that memorization aspect so that we get students to be, you know, learners of these words and owners of these words as they work through the ladder?

Margaret McKeown 38:39

Yeah, important topic because uh vocabulary assessment is sort of a fraught issue. In fact, colleagues and I actually wrote a whole book on it. Um, so first of all, a standardized vocabulary test is the last thing that's going to tell you whether your students are growing in vocabulary. They're just not designed to do that. What they're designed for is to separate high vocabulary users from lower, less skilled vocabulary users. That's that's it. So if you need uh an assessment of what kids are actually learning in your classroom, you need to use something else. And it depends on um so I kind of think of assessment as two parts. One is that if the teacher needs a grade, uh she has to use vocabulary either as a they get a grade in vocabulary or has to be part of the reading grade. And I think for that, keep it simple. Just give a kid a test where it's just um words and and uh quick synonyms or definitions and have them do a matching. If you want to go a little deeper, uh something I like a lot is sentence stems. So not asking kids to write the word in a sentence, because then you get, you know, I was consistent. Like, uh so you give a stem, like saying, um, every morning I'm consistent when, and then kids have to really come up with something and invent something. So that's a really useful one that goes a little deeper and really gets you to see what kids understand and how well they can use the word. But also if if you want to know it at a deeper level how kids are doing in uh being able to generate contacts and being able to use contacts and embed words into their language, I think I'd just keep a little check plus minus tabulation going when you do these things like throw out to kids, you know, how would you feel if I canceled your summer vacation? Um and you know, how are kids just saying um I'd be really unhappy and they can't go beyond that? Or does what they say really explain what they what they mean and and how that word is now embedded into their language? Um and just keep a little thing going on that, and knowing that um the kids who don't who seem to be uh a little less able to do that, maybe you want to call on them more often. Or maybe you want to have some times when you have little you know groups or pairs of kids and you give them uh something like sentence stems or some kind of activity to do, and you make sure a stronger kid gets paired with a less strong kid, but that they they both get get a chance to work on that and to understand that. And I think you know, uh sometimes you have exercises like that that are written, and then it's always really good to share them afterwards, because the more the kids who are less you know lower on the wrong, less able to really integrate that word and see it in a fuller way, um, the more that they hear other uses, that that's gonna help them too. That's gonna help them uh climb up that ladder.

Lori 42:00

Yeah, I like that. I love those sentence stems. That's a a great teacher tip right there. Um and I'm thinking too about like this idea of thinking about vocabulary in an assessment in a different way, that like students speaking and writing are some of the best ways to assess vocabulary and that it's not like a neat test. It's you know, I when um I remember when I was teaching fifth grade, I had a clipboard and I would just kind of like as I was hearing, I had the words at the top, and as I had heard students use them or they use them in their writing, I just kind of would put a check mark if it was used appropriately. Now that's like a lot harder than just grading a test and being like, okay, we're done. Like, and not harder, it's just messier. Like, right? It's not like it's harder, it's just messier. Um, so just like kind of putting that out there too. It's it's just like comprehension. It's messy.

Margaret McKeown 42:50

Yeah, it's messy, yeah. And then the thing is, you know, you may you may sit down to try to give kids a grade and realize, oh, there are three kids that you never gave any any ticks to, and wow, how are they doing? That's why I think it's really good to also have this other thing, which is a really simple kind of test that you can give them a grade on, and you can use that this this kind of chuck plus thing. You don't even have to use that in your grading. You can use that as just uh, you know, teach data that you're collecting to know how to um help your kids move along, move up that ladder. So it can it can be you know your own personal assessment, but it doesn't have to be for a grade as part of the as part of the grade.

Lori 43:34

Yeah, yeah. Grades make it tricky, huh?

Margaret McKeown 43:37

Yeah, yeah, always. Yeah.

Melissa 43:40

Marty, I'm curious about, you know, when I when I was in the classroom, attention that I would feel is like I felt like I was doing a lot of really great stuff with vocabulary, but then we would to take a test, not not a test that I made, but a test like an IRETE test. And, you know, then they would some of my students would score low on the vocabulary section of that test. And I always felt a little kind of stressed by that because I'm like, I am doing a lot of vocabulary work, but then these words we didn't know. I mean, they're just different words that could show up on this assessment, but then you have the pressure of people who are like, you gotta work on the vocabulary with your students. Um, can you speak to that at all or make teachers feel a little better? About that?

Margaret McKeown 44:23

It's hard because you're exactly right. It may or may not have anything to do with the words that you're teaching in the classroom. So again, uh kids that already have higher vocabularies are going to score better because they've run into some of those words, where lower vocabulary skill kids have not. So yeah, it's it's hard, especially when pressure is put on teachers. Oh, your kids didn't grow in vocabulary. So I guess it's good on the case.

Lori 44:54

Not on these words, right? But other words.

Margaret McKeown 44:56

Exactly. I mean, that's the response. But if your principal's like, well, we need to bring up the vocabulary scores, um maybe that's a reason to have these things like sentence stems and pull them out and go, look at what these kids can do on these words that they're learning. Um because it it really is just silly. But I know if you're a teacher in a classroom and you know you're somebody's looking over your shoulder at your scores, it's not silly, but it's not, it's not fair. It's not accurate, it's not a good representation of what kids are learning. And if that's what you're responsible for as a teacher, I would think, then there's nothing you can do about that. Um I don't know, maybe as a teacher to to you know, have the information handy and be able to say to the principal, well, you know, these these standardized tests are not really meant to measure vocabulary growth. And what I'm doing is this, and they're testing just what just a bunch of words that have been pulled off some list somewhere that may or may not have anything to do with what they do in the classroom. So it's really not it's it's really not informing what kids are learning. I think if teachers are able to take that, I mean that's that's I'm sure that's hard for a lot of teachers, but if they're able, you know, they're armed with the information, they know what these tests really are, and they can talk about what they're doing in the classroom, what the kids are doing, um then maybe principals will start to get the message. Oh, you know what? You know, um, who knows? I don't know. But you know, other things that I've seen teachers do uh is um post some of the words that the class is working on on the door or outside their classroom. And then when the principal comes in and uses one of those words, and the kids, of course, go crazy, um, they love that, or they can, you know, the principal asks a question around one of those words and they can answer it. And so that also can let the principal or other teachers might come into your classroom, that there really is a lot going on with vocabulary. And just having those words up there uh says, oh, the kids are do the kids know this, do they really know this word? They know that word, and um, they can test them out and see. As much as you can share what you're doing, uh other things that I've seen teachers do is to, you know, the bulletin board outside their rooms. They will post sentences, context that kids have come up with using some pretty sophisticated words. And that always impresses. Um, and of course, causes a little competition. The next, the fifth grade teacher next door is gonna say, Well, wait a minute, and they're gonna start their own bulletin board, and that's great. You know, competitive vocabulary, that's perfect.

Lori 47:49

We love competitive vocabulary. That's a great, I like that. That's a great tip right there. And I love the idea too of transparency, right? Like, yeah, these are the words we're working with. These, and maybe even like this is the text where they're from, and differ the different words from different texts or the different parts of, right? The morphological parts of words we're working with. So cool.

Melissa 48:10

Yeah, and I was just gonna say it's so empowering for teachers to hear, like, yes, like that is what you want to do. Because I've heard teachers want to go down the rabbit hole of, well, let's find the list of the words that are going to be on this assessment. Like, let's let or let's look at past assessments and see which words show up. And like, we don't want to do that.

Lori 48:28

I mean, I can't even think about doing that. That's true.

Melissa 48:29

And then those words are in isolation, and those are not, that's not the way we want to go about this. So I think it's really empowering to hear, especially from someone like you who's been working with vocabulary for so long, to hear like, no, you're doing the right thing. Work with those words deeply in the context of what you're teaching. That's where you want to stay.

Margaret McKeown 48:47

Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, if you want to be sneaky about it and look on um past assessments for words, but then don't, you know, teach and quiz kids on those words. Do the kinds of things we've been talking about. You know, the informal drop the word into the environment and and begin to have kids work with it. And then when kids see it on the test, they'll be all excited. Say, oh, we know this word, um, which is not bad for anybody either.

Melissa 49:18

Marty, thank you so much for sharing your, you know, just wealth of expertise with us on vocabulary. We could have kept talking to you for hours and hours about all that you know. I'm wondering if there is like one last thing you want to leave with teachers about vocabulary instruction that we maybe didn't get to touch on today.

Stay Connected And Share

Margaret McKeown 49:37

One of the saddest things I think I've ever read is kids who say um vocabulary is the least favorite uh subject in school. And I think, how can that possibly be? This is your language. This is how you share yourself with the world, and this is how you learn about the world. And I I really want kids to just relish the idea of having words, you know, owning words. And it's not like, oh, now I have to learn that word. It's like, ooh, now I get to use that word. Now that's part of me. And I guess that's the overall kind of mindset that uh, you know, I hope teachers can develop in their classrooms. One more thing is when teachers share their learning of a word. You know, maybe they ran into a word in a book that they were reading that they didn't know or that was used in a different way, that's a great thing to share with kids. Because I think so often kids think the teachers already know anything. I'm not gonna say I don't know this word because it'll sound make me sound stupid. But if you realize there's so many words in the language, your teacher hasn't even learned them all. That's really useful. And to have the teacher convey not to be like, oh, I didn't know this word, but to say, I didn't know this word, and now I know it. Now I understand it is also a really important thing to be able to do.

Lori 51:08

Yeah, I love that. That's so so great. Well, we can't thank you enough for being here. This was truly an honor, and we're so glad that you got to share so many words of wisdom about vocabulary with our listeners. Thank you for being here.

Margaret McKeown 51:24

You're very welcome, and uh thank you for allowing me to yammer on about vocabulary.

Melissa 51:32

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Lori 51:42

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Melissa 51:52

Just a quick reminder that the views and opinions expressed by the hosts and guests of the Melissa and Lori Love Literacy Podcast are not necessarily the opinions of Great Minds PBC or its employees.

Lori 52:04

We appreciate you so much, and we're so glad you're here to learn with us.