Context Is Everything, by Susan Mandel Glazer

For a student's vocabulary to grow, words must be learned in a greater framework

All right, this is your homework for tonight. Here are the words that are in our social studies lesson tomorrow. If you don't know what they mean, look them up in the dictionary. Then, write the word and definition on an index card. Finally, write the word in a sentence on the back of the card.

I hope this never happens in any classroom. Asking children to use a dictionary without discussion to expand their vocabularies is uninteresting, unnatural and unwarranted. This type of assignment requests that the student teach him or herself. Directing students with words without showing them what to do is quite difficult. Asking them to do it independently without observing a model is inappropriate instruction.

Vocabulary-enhancing strategies
In her book Using Literature to Enhance Writing Instruction (International Reading Association, 2005), Rebecca Olness talks not about vocabulary instruction, but about "choosing the right words." She implies that words have to be learned within a context. Guiding children to learn to use new words means "selecting the best word to make meaning clear and to create a particular feeling." Learning new words from context they read is also an authentic way for children to expand their use of language.

These four strategies shared with me by my colleague, Phyllis Fantauzzo, are wonderful examples of how learning new words grows naturally from all other instructional activities.

1. Interpreting poems.
   This is one wonderful way to guide students to increase their bank of words. Poems include unusual words used in unexpected ways. So, making meaning of poems is one of the major challenges in determining what poets mean to say with the words they select.

   One eight-year-old in our Center for Reading and Writing at Rider University was trying to make meaning of a poem about a ladybug. The word "ladybug" was not used in the text, so the child was guided to use the strategy that's effective for discovering the meaning of written text with inferred meanings. He began by reading the first line of the poem and then putting it in his own words. He continued to do this for each line of the poem. The child responded most to the phrase "smaller than a grape" and tried to think of an object that reflected the size implied by the phrase. Even though he was using his own language, he was unable to figure out what the poem was about.

   A second strategy used when the first fails is to ask the learner to circle words in the poem that are unfamiliar to him or her. "I can't get what it means because I don't know other words for 'speckled' and 'crimson,'" commented the child. How astute he was to determine that word meaning stopped him from comprehending the rest of the text. When his teacher had him select the color of the ladybug from a color chart, he discovered the meaning of the word. "It says crimson. So crimson is like red!"

2. Make the meaning stick.
   Using Post-It® notes to identify unfamiliar words during reading is a strategy that guides students to take responsibility for learning meanings of unknown words. Direct children to put a Post-It note at the edge of the page of print, near the word they do not understand, and to draw an arrow on the note that points to the word in the text. Discovering the meaning through context or even using a dictionary then becomes a fun challenge, much like a game, because the student pinpointed the words on his or her own.

3. Word repetition.
   Using the same word again and again in daily conversation is a sure way to help students learn the meaning. When a word has multiple meanings, using it in several contexts for each intent assists children to use the word.

4. Play with prefixes.
   Using many different words that have the same prefix guides children to cull the prefix's meaning. The following is an example of one teacher's use of the prefix "tri-" and how it guided her students to discover its meaning.

   "It was a tripodal bench, but it couldn't seat triplets. It was just too small. The triplets triply attempted to sit, but nothing they did worked. They used masking tape to tripartition it. And although there were three sections, these were too small for four-year-old Trillion, Triennia and Triune to sit on together. So the triplets' mother found a triple-decker chair, which solved the problem. Each of the triplets finally had her own seat."

   One child remarked, "Oh, there are lots of 'tri's' in the story. I can find 10 in all." "I know what it means!" exclaimed another child, wildly waving his hand. "It means 'three.'" "How do you know that?" asked the teacher. "Because triplets are twins who are three of them," he said. "So," asked the teacher, "what do you think a tripodal bench is?" That's easy, responded the student. "It's a bench with three legs."

Conversations and creating meaningful contexts are the very best ways to guide children to incorporate new vocabulary into their oral and written communication.

Susan Mandel Glazer is the Director of the Center for Reading and Writing at Rider University in Lawrenceville, NJ.