Early Elementary Students ' Word Knowledge

Within mathematics instruction, strategies for solving basic operations are strong and systemic. However, students in the intermediate grades struggle with finding and using reliable strategies for solving word problems. The complexity of language that’s used in a mathematical context makes it difficult for students to have a confident approach. Therefore, action research is being conducted on how reading comprehension can be dove-tailed with word-problem-solving in an elementary classroom. Action research will be used to make a positive change in the

Throughout the eighth grade year, my reading comprehension and analysis skills have dramatically strengthened. First, my reading comprehension abilities have strengthened over the year because of the strong vocabulary that filled the books I read. The books that used advanced terminology were Lord of the Flies, Fahrenheit 451 and Twelfth Night. Whenever I read a word I didn’t understand in these novels, I always searched for the definition. By using this effective reading strategy, I was able to strengthen my vocabulary while receiving a complete comprehension of the novel being analyzed. Lord of the Flies, Fahrenheit 451 and Twelfth Night were both challenging novels to read because of their sophisticated vocabulary. However, these challenging

Whether the task is understanding mathematical word problems, analyzing research articles in science, or summarizing instructions from a shop class manual, it is self-evident that learning cannot occur independently of reading. Furthermore, Trelease cites the 1983 Department of Education report, which reads, “The single most important activity for building the knowledge required for eventual success in reading is reading aloud to children,” (Trelease, The Read-Aloud Handbook, 2013, p. 1). From an evidentiary standpoint, this report draws credibility from a compilation of twenty five years’ worth of research projects and is given its authority because of its connection to the Board of Education. On the same token, Trelease introduces findings from another report, this time from doctors Hart and Risely at the University of Kansas. In short, their findings strongly correlated the volume of words heard at home to student success at school (Trelease, The Read-Aloud Handbook, 2013, p. 2). When the students heard fewer words at home, students were less successful; inversely, when students heard more words at home, students were more successful. In conclusion, Trelease’s ultimate supposition rests on these conclusions: literacy is extremely valuable in general education, while reading aloud is crucial to developing

The Simple View of Reading (SVoR) model suggests that children must have language comprehension and word recognition skills to be proficient readers, Medwell et al (2014). Jim Rose’s report (2006, p. 40) outlined the Simple View of Reading as a useful framework, which would make explicit to teachers what they need to teach about word recognition and language comprehension (see appendix 1). Before the Rose report, reading was defined as decoding black marks, Graham and Kelly (2012). After this the searchlights model suggested that phonics, grammatical knowledge, reading comprehension and graphic knowledge are equally useful tools when learning to read, Ward (2008). The Rose report’s Independent Review of the Teaching of Early reading reconstructed this model and created the SVoR. Rose (2006, p. 38) determines word recognition as a process which allows you to use “phonics to recognise words” and language comprehension as the means by which “word information, sentences and discourse are interpreted.” The SVoR suggests that, to become a fluent reader, the skills of language comprehension and word recognition are equally important and dependent on each other. Gough and Tummer first mentioned this model, as stated that “comprehension is not sufficient, for decoding is also necessary” Wyse et al (2013, p.

“A Read Aloud Curriculum integrates intentional direct comprehension and explicit vocabulary instruction into read alouds while maintaining the integrity of an authentic read aloud experience that would be highly engaging for students (Fien, et al., 2011).” The Read Aloud program is structures as to “(a) set a purpose for reading, (b) building vocabulary knowledge, (c) making text-to-text and text-to-life connections, and (d) having students retell stories or information on a regular basis (Fien, et al., 2011).” The problem is that Read Alouds by themselves do not help close the gap between children who enter school with strong vocabularies and children who enter school with weak vocabularies, accordingly the gap between students with strong and weak vocabularies only grows as the children progress through school. Another setback for students with weak vocabularies is that there is a direct link between word knowledge and comprehension, consequently the children with weak vocabularies will struggle with comprehension. Small-group instruction shows promise in improving student’s vocabularies thus improving their comprehension. By spending more time with the text and receiving instruction in a group of 2-5 students, those with weak vocabularies have shown improvement in their word knowledge and

Comprehension is also an important factor when speaking of literacy. Students should be taught the many strategies that will help them with comprehension and word recognition. In my experience in a first grade classroom I used many of these strategies. Within my lessons I included the activation of prior knowledge to construct meaning, the use of context clues in a sentence, pictures clues, predicting, and drawing inferences about ideas or characters in the text. I always made sure that I modeled the strategy for the student before they set of to do it.

Within mathematics instruction, strategies for solving basic operations are strong and systemic. However, students in the intermediate grades struggle with finding and using reliable strategies for solving word problems. The complexity of language that’s used in a mathematical context makes it difficult for students to have a confident approach. Therefore, research is being conducted on how reading comprehension can be dove-tailed with word-problem-solving in an elementary classroom.

Reading comprehension may be the most important skill for any student to acquire and is therefore an area of particular interest to educators. Without adequate comprehension skills, students are limited in their reading, analytical and occupational abilities. To many, including the student’s themselves, comprehension or “good reading” skills begin and end with simple decoding. It is thought that if students can ‘read’ and define the vocabulary they are reading, then they also comprehend what is read. True comprehension goes far beyond decoding, however. True comprehension requires visualization of a text, predicting events in the text, making inferences about the text and clarifying what is not

When students enter into the kindergarten classroom, they are greeted with a plethora of new knowledge that they may have previously not had exposure, such as phonics, phonemic awareness, fluency, comprehension, and vocabulary. Within these, vocabulary is often a major struggle for many children in kindergarten. Young children are often exposed to vocabulary through conversations, but not in a manner of teaching it explicitly. Through this literature review it was my goal as a researcher to find primary studies that focused on high quality instruction in the field of emergent vocabulary, especially in the kindergarten classroom. This topic came into fruition through wanting to understand literacy practices in kindergarten classrooms, since the implementation of Common Core State Standards.

Although vocabulary is the sub-skill of a language, it plays a very important role in language learning and teaching. In fact, vocabulary is central to language and is of paramount importance to language learners. On the other hand, words are the building blocks of a language that are used to label objects, actions, and ideas. In other words, people cannot convey the intended meaning without knowing vocabulary. It is widely accepted that vocabulary is a very important part in English language learning because no one can communicate in any meaningful way without vocabulary. As McCarthy (1990) stated, the single, biggest component of any language course is vocabulary. Nation (1990) also affirms that vocabulary can be considered as the most important element in language learning because Learners think that many of their

A LML vocabulary size can be linked to numerous problems that they face with reading testing, “together with evidence of low English vocabulary levels common among LML these findings lead to a general consensus that limited vocabulary is a major source of reading comprehension difficulties in this population” (Kieffer et, al 1173). When LML have to stop and decode a word they do not know, there is a larger chance they will not take away any meaning from what they have read (Kieffer et, al). This means that they have a larger chance of being marked down in comprehension, fluency, and word recognition. They will be marked down in comprehension because they do not know what they have read. They may be marked down in fluency because they may not have accurately read the text. Finally, they may

Vocabulary plays a significant role in English as second language learning process. For the majority of English as Second Language(ESL) learners, the ultimate goal of learning the language is to understand (read and listen) and communicate (write and speak) with little difficulty and the lack of sufficient vocabulary may be the constraint of such goal (Folse, 2004). As the bedrock of English and as well as language, vocabulary also facilitates the development of other language skills: lexical richness leads to the progress in the use of language, namely listening, speaking, reading and writing skills (Nation, 1994). Reversely, The improvement in such skills may enhance learners vocabulary size as the exposure to more learning materials improves the capacity to acquire new vocabulary. (The importance of learning vocabulary/ why vocabulary?)

When data from students who had average accuracy and fluency scores, but lower comprehension scores were compared to data from those with similar accuracy and fluency but average comprehension, the consistent differences were found to be lower oral language and vocabulary skills in the poor comprehenders upon entry into formal schooling. (Nation, Cocksey, Taylor & Bishop) Thousands of dollars each year are spent on intervention, trying to improve the reading of children that show delays. When one reads, the clear goal is comprehension of what is read. Without communication of ideas between the author and reader, decoding texts is pointless. Most intervention programs are focused on phonics and word decoding. Oral language interventions concurrent with vocabulary and comprehension tasks at age eight have been shown to lead to significant improvements in reading comprehension. (Nation, et al., 2010). Reading comprehension is not merely a product of being able to decode words and sentences. How we teach children to process and integrate the ideas found in text can have a large impact on their ability to function in a world of ever expanding knowledge and information.

Many students are passed on through the education system without having proper reading skills. These skills consist of fluency, comprehension, and phonemic awareness. Reading skills are foundational building blocks for elementary aged students. Students who lack proper reading skills, such as fluency or the rate in which they read, will ultimately lack comprehension of what they are reading due to the amount of time in which it takes the students to read. This leads to the question, how does fifth grade students lack of fluency affect his or her reading comprehension? Unfortunately, because reading skills taught in kindergarten and first grade focus mainly on phonemic

As Krashen points out, “ A large vocabulary is, of course, essential for mastery of a language” . Thornbury also points out “ Without grammar very little can be conveyed, without vocabulary nothing can be conveyed”. In this respect, Pittelman and Heimlich also add that vocabulary knowledge is important in understanding both spoken and written language. They state, it is not surprising that vocabulary knowledge is critical to reading comprehension. In order for children to understand what they are reading, they must know the meanings of the words they encounter. Children with limited vocabulary knowledge will experience difficulty comprehending both oral and written text