This was the activity of partners working together to complete a graphic organizer for each of the vocabulary words (Appendix C). There were five tasks to be done on each page for each vocabulary word, and a section in which each of those tasks were to be completed. All tasks were to be completed in a peer-mediated situation, in which students helped each other complete the graphic organizer.
In one section of the graphic organizer, students were to write a description of the vocabulary term. There was also a section for the student to draw a picture or a non- linguistic representation of the word. In another section students cited an example of the
word, and in another they cited a nonexample, which could have been either written or nonlinguistic representations. At the bottom of the graphic organizer, there was a space for analysis of that particular vocabulary word, to determine if the word had a prefix or suffix. There were two days given for the completion of the interactive graphic organizer so teachers did not have to spend more than approximately 20 minutes on vocabulary instruction each day.
There were only enough pages of the interactive graphic organizer in the
Vocabulary Book for the students to complete half of the vocabulary words. For instance, if there were six vocabulary words for that particular selection, there were only three graphic organizer pages in an individual Vocabulary Book. The purpose for this was to facilitate student interaction, or peer mediation, to complete the pages. The partners were required to tell each other what to write in each section. One partner was called the reporter, the other the recorder. The reporter would tell the recorder what to write in each of the sections on the graphic organizer. The reporter gave the description/explanation in his/her own words, and told the recorder what to draw for a representation of the word. The recorder would complete the graphic organizer in his/her own Vocabulary Book by writing or drawing what the reporter said. The reporter determined examples and
nonexamples of the word, which could be linguistic or nonlinguistic representations, and dictated to the recorder what to put in the example and nonexample sections. The reporter also analyzed the word to determine if the word had affixes, but the recorder continued to be the one doing the writing.
reporter could not think of a nonexample, the recorder could discuss ideas with the reporter. But the reporter would make the final decision, and the recorder would write what the reporter decided. Then the roles reversed, and the student who was the recorder became the reporter, and told the partner the information to complete a page in his/her Vocabulary Book for the next vocabulary word. The roles continued to alternate between the partners until a graphic organizer had been completed for each vocabulary term.
This interaction looked something like this.
Student one was the reporter. The word lair was written in the section at the top of the graphic organizer. The reporter told student two, the recorder, to draw a picture of a cave where a mountain lion lived. She told the recorder to write the words “a place where animals live” in the section labeled
“description.” She told the reporter to either write or draw a tree in the section labeled “nonexample.” For the section labeled “example,” she would tell the reporter to draw or write about a place where a tiger might live.
After the first word was completed, the students switched roles. So the student who was the recorder then told the partner what to write or draw in each section. This rotation continued for about 20 minutes a day for two days until a graphic organizer was completed for each word.
Day 5: The last day of the week consisted of a review game and the quiz for the
week’s vocabulary words. Review games were one of two PowerPoint template games, derived from the television game shows Jeopardy and $100,000 Pyramid. Students worked with partners or teams to participate in these games, creating a situation of peer
mediation once more.
The Pyramid game was completed as a partner activity. The PowerPoint was projected onto a screen at the front of the room. One student faced the screen and the other student faced away from the screen. When a vocabulary word from that week’s story appeared on the screen, the student facing the screen described the word to the partner, and the partner guessed the vocabulary word. The screenshots were timed for 20 seconds, and the team earned a point for each word they guessed correctly within the time limit. After all of the words had been described and guessed, the roles were reversed, and the student who had been guessing the word became the one who described the word to the partner (see Appendix D).
The Pyramid game would proceed as follows.
Students placed their chairs in pairs. One student turned his/her chair away from the screen at the front of the room. The other student’s chair faced the screen. A picture of an animal’s den and the word lair came up on the screen. The student facing the screen gave clues to the partner, such as, “a place where wild animals live.” The partner guessed which vocabulary word was being described.
The screens were timed, so if the partner did not guess the word before the screen changed, no points were earned.
For the second part of the game, the partners changed positions. The last part of the PowerPoint included a review screen which contained numbered boxes with no pictures. The teacher asked a student to pick a number. When the
number was picked, the teacher clicked on that number, and a vocabulary word came up for the students to describe to their partners. The partner had to describe it in the allotted time to earn points.
The students were in teams of three or four for the Jeopardy game, again creating a peer-mediated situation. Each team had a white board and marker to write their
answers. If white boards were not available, students used paper to record their answers. When the description of a vocabulary word came up under each dollar amount, the students discussed as a team what the word might be, and then they wrote that word on the white board and held it up. The PowerPoint was timed for the answer to display on the screen after 30 seconds, and if the teams had the correct word, they received the points based on the dollar amount of the square in which the word was found. Jeopardy could accommodate 20-25 words, and each story unit had five to seven words, so Jeopardy was played intermittently. Jeopardy was played three times during the study, and each time it was played it included words from the current lesson and previous lessons (see Appendix D).
The Jeopardy game was played as follows.
The teacher divided the students into teams of three or four students. Each team had a marker and a small whiteboard on which to write their answers. They also had a piece of paper on which to keep their score.
The Jeopardy game template was projected onto the screen. The teacher picked one team to begin the game. They decided on a category across the top and a dollar amount. The categories at the top were letters, so the team said
something such as “B for $200.” The teacher clicked on that square, and a description of one of the vocabulary words came up.
The team discussed together which word they thought was being described, and they wrote that word on their whiteboard, then held up the whiteboard until the answer appeared on the screen. If the team had the correct answer, they earned the amount of points listed as the dollar amount. For the example above, the team earned 200 points. Each team kept their own score.
After the review game was played, the students were given the weekly quiz from
the selection for that week. This quiz was identical to the quiz given on the first day of the vocabulary instructional cycle. The pre- and post-quizzes were collected weekly by the investigator.
Teacher Training for Treatment Group Instruction
All treatment teachers were invited to a two-hour training prior to the beginning
of the school year. This training provided an explanation of how each treatmentgroup
would use the core reading program with the intervention. Emphasis was on the implementation of the treatment, with some information on the reasoning behind the treatment. The rationale for the study was explained to the treatment teachers, which included basic information on the importance of vocabulary, what the research says, and the relationship between vocabulary and comprehension. Part of the discussion related to the fact that this district was struggling to meet the needs of English learners as evidenced in the gap between proficient students and English learners on standardized tests.
Training was offered to the treatment teachers on two different afternoons from which teachers could choose to attend. A meal was provided to thank them for attending the training and for their willingness to participate in the study. The training included a PowerPoint that explained the purpose of the study (see Appendix E). After the
introduction of the study, the treatment teachers were given the explanation of steps to be used in the intervention. However, most had a difficult time attending the trainings because of demands of workshops and preparation for the new school year. Only two treatment teachers attended the complete training.
For those treatment teachers who could not attend, the training was provided individually. The investigator met with each of these teachers at their individual schools before or after school hours and explained the intervention to them over the next 3 weeks. They were told how to provide the explicit vocabulary explanation, implement the
weekly schedule, and reinforce the purposeful and strategic communicative techniques using the core reading program. During each meeting the investigator provided a weekly schedule for the treatment teachers to follow, as well as the flash drive with the
nonlinguistic representations and PowerPoint game templates. This meeting lasted approximately an hour for each teacher.
Training for the treatment classrooms included one in-class session in which the investigator visited each class and presented an overview of components of the
intervention with the students. This lasted approximately an hour. It was expected that this training would be accomplished within the first full week of school. However this process took 3 weeks to complete as classes could not be trained until the teacher had
been trained and most teachers were trained individually because of the lack of
attendance at the initial scheduled trainings. Thus, a shortened version of each component of the intervention was modeled with the students by the investigator. This helped the teachers understand what was expected, and familiarized the students with the process to minimize confusion when the teacher began implementation of the intervention. This overview included the following.
Demonstrating explicit explanations using nonlinguistic representations for words, which were shown one by one on a screen (all teachers had LCD projectors, so the images were projected onto the board).
Helping students make associations and personal connections with the terms; Using the template for word analysis.
Practicing the recorder/reporter section of the graphic organizer with the students.
Briefly playing both of the review games.
The words used in this demonstration were from a different core reading program, so there was no chance of preteaching any of the words to be used in the study. The purpose was to demonstrate procedures for each part of the intervention for the students and the teachers.
Throughout the study, treatment teachers were sent additional copies of the schedule, the observation checklist, and email reminders to include all parts of the intervention in the manner outlined. These reminders were sent out as clarifications for everyone if the investigator observed something that needed to be addressed in the
implementation of the intervention.
Instructional Materials for Treatment Group
Several kinds of materials were provided for the treatment group. Much effort was made to ensure that there was minimal preparation or time required of the teachers, and that all materials were supplied for them. Teachers were provided with all of the mastery tests and weekly quizzes for each student in the class. Teachers had access to the weekly quizzes in the assessment handbook that came with the core reading program, but the investigator provided copies of these for the pre- and post-quizzes so the teachers did not have to make any copies on their own, thus minimizing the work of implementing the intervention (see Appendix F). Only the English learners’ materials were analyzed for this study, but materials were provided for each student so the teacher could administer the intervention class-wide during reading instruction time. Each teacher was given a flash drive with descriptions of all the tested vocabulary words and a picture associated with each word to use in the explicit explanation portion of the intervention by projecting it onto a screen. The flash drive contained the two PowerPoint template games used during the review part of the intervention each week (see Appendix B and D).
Two books were provided for each student: a basic composition notebook in
which the students wrote the definitions of the vocabulary terms in their own words and drew pictures that represented the meaning of the word, and a “Vocabulary Book” that contained several parts of the intervention, including the following.
affixes and the base word.
A set of graphic organizers for each selection which were to be used during the peer-mediated activities (see Appendix B).
The composition notebooks and the Vocabulary Books were collected by the investigator in December at the end of the study.
Comparison Group Instruction
The comparison group used the vocabulary lessons from the core reading program for vocabulary instruction. Following standard practice, teachers were free to determine how to implement the core reading program. They also had the option of bringing in supplemental materials at their discretion, if that was something they would normally do. Comparison group teachers were not made aware of any part of the vocabulary
intervention being implemented by the treatment teachers.
Comparison teachers were free to implement the core reading program vocabulary instruction according to their standard practice. The core reading program provided various recommendations for vocabulary instruction for each of the selections. If teachers followed the instructional recommendations presented in the core reading program, an example of a week of vocabulary instruction for the comparison group would have included the following.
Day 1: Introduce lesson vocabulary. In an example from one selection, this is the
lesson plan for introducing the lesson vocabulary. Use a categorizing activity in which
about the categories in which the lesson words belong. Have students check a dictionary or glossary for the meanings of any unknown words. Explain analogies to students, and incorporate lesson words into oral analogies, focusing on antonyms and synonyms. Have students produce analogies with known antonyms and synonyms.
Day 2: Students read a passage that contains the tested vocabulary words. Remind
students to use context clues to clarify the meaning of the words, and/or a dictionary or glossary. Have students create analogies with the words from the passage using known
antonyms.
Day 3: No instruction or practice of tested vocabulary. Day 4: No instruction or practice of tested vocabulary.
Day 5: Review lesson vocabulary using antonyms to create analogies with the
tested vocabulary. Test the vocabulary words.
Some supplemental materials available in the core reading program were
purchased by the district and were used at the discretion of the teachers. These included internet links with animated segments to teach aspects of a lesson. One comparison teacher was observed using the animated segment called “Grammar Jammer,” which had a cartoon character explaining a grammar feature. Other materials were picture cards of the tested vocabulary words and posters meant to reinforce concepts for English learners, called ELL posters. Some supplemental materials were not purchased by the district. Some schools had the ELL Handbook, others did not. It was not known if they were not purchased for every school or if there was confusion in the delivery of the materials. Other core reading supplemental materials included a reader’s and writer’s notebook,
leveled readers, ELL and ELD readers, practice stations flip charts, baseline group tests, the weekly tests book, the Fresh Reads for Fluency Comprehension book, and the unit and end-of-year benchmark assessments. Other than the weekly tests book and the unit and end-of-year benchmark assessments, it was not known by the investigator which of these additional materials were purchased, but they were not observed being used in the comparison classrooms.
Teacher Training for Comparison Group Instruction
Because none of the comparison teachers attended the initial training, they were all instructed individually on the procedure for the study and what they would be required to do. The investigator met with each teacher for approximately 30 minutes before or after school. They were instructed to teach the tested vocabulary words as they normally would, using the district-adopted core reading program, and any other strategies or materials they may have wanted to use. There were six requirements for comparison group teachers: (a) administer the mastery pretest to their students prior to the beginning of the study; (b) give the weekly vocabulary quiz prior to teaching the words for the selection; (c) give the weekly quiz at the end of the instructional cycle; (d) complete weekly logs giving a basic summary of their vocabulary instruction for the selection (see Appendix H); (e) administer the mastery posttest at the conclusion of the study; and (f) allow the investigator to observe vocabulary instruction in their classrooms.
Instructional Material for Comparison Group
The comparison group teachers had access to the core reading program, and it was expected that comparison group teachers would use those materials for their vocabulary instruction. They were free to use the components as they saw fit in their own