Secondary Reading Instruction (Part 1): Teaching Vocabulary and Comprehension in the Content Areas
Assessment
Take some time now to answer the following questions. Please note that the IRIS Center does not collect your Assessment responses. If this is a course assignment, you should turn them in to your professor using whatever method he or she requires. If you have trouble answering any of the questions, go back and review the Perspectives & Resources pages in this module.
- List at least three benefits for students that occur when content-area teachers provide literacy instruction.
- In the video (a portion of which you saw earlier in this module), Anita Archer offers vocabulary instruction for a middle school language arts class. She explicitly teaches the word intention.
- Of the four effective vocabulary practices you have learned about in this module—selecting essential words, defining and contextualizing the terms, helping students actively process the terms, providing multiple exposures to vocabulary—which one best describes how Anita Archer helps students to understand the term intention?
- Give at least two specific examples to support your answer.
- Describe how you would implement one of the other vocabulary practices to deepen students’ understanding of the word intention.
Video is courtesy Anita L. Archer.
Transcript: Vocabulary Instruction
Teacher: And our next word is…what, everyone?
Class: Intention.
Teacher: Okay, and read…It is a…what, everyone? A…
Class: Noun.
Teacher: And read it with me, and go…
Class: “When you have an idea or a plan of what you are going to do, you have an intention.”
Teacher: Okay, so if you have a plan or an idea of what you’re going to do, you have a…what everyone? An…
Class: Intention.
Teacher: Read the first example, and go…
Class: “Harriet Tubman’s intention was to become a free slave.”
Teacher: So she had a plan, an idea, that she wanted to do that, she had a…what, everyone? An…
Class: Intention.
Teacher: Read the next example.
Class: “Harriet’s intention was to escape slavery, even if she had to go alone.”
Teacher: So even if she couldn’t get her brothers or her sisters or her husband to go with her, she had a…what, everyone? She had an…
Class: Intention.
Teacher: Intention. Okay, so get ready to tell me, everyone, if this is an intention. So you come to language arts, and you say it’s 2:09, I want to be able to write even longer stories. If so, does he have an intention? Yes or no.
Class: Yes.
Teacher: Yes, and he has an idea of what he wants, and that is a…what, everyone? A…
Class: Intention.
Teacher: Okay, this is pretend. You come to language arts and you are, like, whatever, whatever, whatever, pretend. At that moment, does he have an intention? Yes or no.
Class: No.
Teacher: No plan, no idea, but you would of course. No what, everyone? No…
Class: Intention.
Teacher: So, again, in your log you are going to write intention. Now I want you to notice how I wrote these notes, though. You’re not going to copy this, but you are going to write down the word and indent underneath it, put the definition so that when you look in your vocabulary log you can see the word, and right under it you can see the definition. And so I might just make this very short: like a plan. Okay, it could be as short as that. So add it to your vocabulary. Don’t copy it. Make it short so it’s in your own words. So you might have intention, an idea or a plan, and that would be good enough for you to remember it. When you are done, just put your pencil down. And here we have some words that are related, and one of the best ways to expand your vocabulary is to see the relationship. So I’m going to tell you a story. When I touch it, say the word. Okay, so Harriet Tubman did…what, everyone?
Class: Intend.
Teacher: To be free. It was her…
Class: Intention.
Teacher: To go from a slave to a free state so she would be free. She had to take some actions that were…
Class: Intentional.
Teacher: So she had to have a plan of those actions. So when she finally did act, she acted…how, everyone?
Class: Intentionally.
Teacher: Beautiful!
(Close this panel)
- Explain how graphic organizers help students improve their vocabulary and reading comprehension. What should you keep in mind when selecting a graphic organizer for students to use?
- Mr. Hammond, a high school biology teacher, will soon be starting a lesson on genetics. In addition to using the textbook chapter, he will incorporate articles from journals, supplementary texts, website material, and news clips. Mr. Hammond would like to start including literacy instruction in his classes to help his students understand the content better. Select any two of the reading comprehension strategies you have learned about in this module and explain how they can help Mr. Hammond’s students to better comprehend the reading content.
To learn more about effective strategies teachers can use to improve the vocabulary and comprehension skills of students with a wide range of abilities and across a variety of subjects, proceed to the following IRIS Module:
