Teachingvocabulary Most people understand the definition of vocabulary, but writing it into a curriculum or doing positive, explicit things to raise vocabulary levels in students is not as clearly defined. There are a few techniques I base any vocabulary work on in my practice, outlined below. Mostly, as a result of this, I want my students to understand three basic concepts:
1. Words exist in networks and families. 2. Words have histories and knowing these histories helps with spelling and
connecting to other words with similar origins. 3. Words contain meaningful parts that can be learned and applied to other words
to work out their meanings too. This chapter offers some methods I use in order to get these ideas across and help expand my students’ vocabularies. Some of the children who come to see me have vast vocabularies. The majority have been read to and extensively spoken to by their parents since infanthood and have a huge store of known words. Some, however, have language impairments that make it hard to learn new words, despite everybody’s best efforts. Rather than try to rewrite a whole vocabulary program, the following lessons are for children who need some intensive teaching in basic vocabulary to help them catch up with the main stream. Inevitably, all vocabulary lessons are interwoven with spelling, reading, etymology and morphology. How could they not be?
Morphology I cannot lie; this is my favourite subject. I love the small, meaningful units of words (called morphemes) that give us the breadth and depth of language. There is so much information contained in a morpheme, it never ceases to amaze me. I am seldom shy about using the words prefix, root or suffix in my practice, no matter how young my students are. They should have those words from the beginning of their education and they should know a great deal of them before they leave primary school. On the whiteboard on my wall, I have some magnetic tiles onto which I’ve written common prefixes and suffixes. Prefixes are relatively easy to teach, so most of the time, I concentrate on suffixes.
The –ed suffix One of the most common spelling mistakes I see in primary school children’s writing is the misapplication of the –ed suffix (e.g. ‘playd’ for played, ‘helpt’ for helped and ‘landid’ for landed). In the absence of explicit teaching and/or not enough independent reading, these children often do not make the association with this suffix and its function as a tense marker. It can be mastered in reading relatively quickly, by
connecting to oral language, but its spelling can dog students all the way through primary school. It can and should be tackled as early as possible. To make matters worse, this suffix can be pronounced three different ways, according to the root that it’s attached to. If the root ends in a noisy (voiced) sound, the suffix takes on that noise and sounds like /d/. If the root ends in a quiet (unvoiced sound), the suffix takes on its quiet form: /t/. If the root ends in <d> or <t>, a schwa sound is inserted before the noisy /d/. This is to help pronunciation. If you try to say the root words plus –ed with mismatched voicing, it feels and sounds awkward. The chart below is a quick reminder:
Figure 1 –ed suffix sounds To start off, I introduce the concept of tense. My students need to understand that there is a past, a present and a future and that these concepts are expressed in language using certain signals. I do this with a simple timeline showing the past, present and future and some words we use to express that:
I then write the word play in the action area of the whiteboard and the following dialogue typically ensues:
TEACHER: This is the verb play. Today I like to play football. Tomorrow I will play football, and yesterday I…what word? STUDENT: Played. TEACHER (pointing at timeline): Good. You changed the form of the verb play from present tense to past tense. When you spell that, you use the suffix –ed (place –ed suffix magnet after the word play to form played). Because play ended with a loud sound, the –ed suffix will also sound loud.
I then write the word help on the board:
TEACHER: This is the verb help. Today I like to help my family. Tomorrow I will help my family, and yesterday I…what word? STUDENT: Helped. TEACHER (pointing at timeline): Good. You changed the form of the verb help from present tense to past tense. When you spell that, you use the suffix –ed (place –ed suffix magnet after the word help to form helped). Because help ended with a quiet sound, the –ed suffix will also sound quiet.
I then write the word land on the board:
TEACHER: This is the verb land. Today I land the plane. Tomorrow I will land the plane, and yesterday I…what word? STUDENT: Landed. TEACHER (pointing at timeline): Good. You changed the form of the verb land from present tense to past tense. When you spell that, you use the suffix –ed (place –ed suffix magnet after the word land to form landed). Because land already had a <d> on the end, neither the quiet nor the noisy form of the –ed suffix will work here. It would make the word too hard to say. So we have to put a vowel sound in between the end of the word and the suffix.
The student then writes the words played, helped and landed in their notebook, and practises other verbs with the –ed suffix through copying, dictation and composition.
The Yes/No Game My board displays a set of suffixes at all times. To have students become familiar with the meaning and spelling of suffixes, as well as the effect they can have on root words, we play the Yes/No Game. It starts by writing a simple word in the action area. We will use call.
TEACHER: This is the verb call. I call my dog. See how many suffixes you can add to call to make a new word. Every suffix you can add, put it in the yes pile on the right. Every suffix you can’t add, put it in the no pile on the left.
The student then takes the first suffix, -ed, and puts it next to call.
TEACHER: What word? STUDENT: Called. TEACHER: Is that a word? STUDENT: Yes. TEACHER: Put the –ed suffix in the yes pile then.
Repeat the process, saying the complete word every time, even if it’s not a real word, e.g. callest, callist, calltion etc. This gives the student practice in pronouncing the suffixes and exposure to their spelling patterns.
TEACHER: You now have three new words that can be formed by adding suffixes to the root word call. What are the words? STUDENT: Called, calling, caller. TEACHER: Let’s write them in your book.
Figure 3 Yes/No Game whiteboard Watch out! You can play the Yes/No Game with hundreds of words, but there are some layers of complexity that you also need to teach explicitly with some root words. The first is when the root ends with Final Silent E. Let’s take the word hope.
TEACHER: This is the verb hope. I hope it is sunny today. See how many suffixes you can add to hope to make a new word. Every suffix you can add,
put it in the yes pile on the right. Every suffix you can’t add, put it in the no pile on the left.
The student then takes the first suffix, -ed, and puts it next to hope.
TEACHER: What word? STUDENT: Hoped. TEACHER: Is that a word? STUDENT: Yes. TEACHER: Put the –ed suffix in the yes pile then.
Repeat the process, saying the complete word every time.
TEACHER: You now have three new words that can be formed by adding suffixes to the root word hope. What are the words? STUDENT: Hoped, hoping, hopeful. TEACHER: Before you write them in your book, I want you to do one more thing. This time, take the three suffixes that you have in the yes pile, and look at the first letter. If the first letter is a vowel, keep it in the yes pile. If the first letter is a consonant, put it in the no pile. Now what do you have? STUDENT: The suffixes –ed and –ing in the yes pile, and the suffix –ful in the no pile. TEACHER: The ones in the yes pile are called vowel suffixes, for obvious reasons. What do you see at the end of the root word hope? STUDENT: Final Silent E. TEACHER: When you add a vowel suffix to a Final Silent E word, do you know what you have to do? STUDENT: Drop the Final Silent E and then add the vowel suffix. TEACHER: Correct. So make sure you do this when you come to write the new words in your book.
The second difficult scenario is when the root word ends with <y>. Let’s take the word happy.
TEACHER: This is the adjective happy. We are very happy. See how many suffixes you can add to happy to make a new word. Every suffix you can add, put it in the yes pile on the right. Every suffix you can’t add, put it in the no pile on the left.
The student then takes the first suffix, -ed, and puts it next to happy.
TEACHER: What word? STUDENT: Happyed. TEACHER: Is that a word? STUDENT: No. TEACHER: Put the –ed suffix in the no pile then.
Repeat the process, saying the complete word every time.
TEACHER: You now have four new words that can be formed by adding suffixes to the root word happy. What are the words? STUDENT: Happiest, happiness, happily and happier. TEACHER: Before you write them in your book, there’s something you should know. When you add a suffix to a word that ends with <y>, a slight change happens. It doesn’t matter if it’s a vowel suffix or a consonant suffix, the change is the same regardless. We spell words with <y> at the end because the letter <i> is illegal at the end of words. The letter <y> comes at the end to solve this problem. However, when you add a suffix, the <y> is no longer at the end, so illegal <i> can return (rub out <y> and replace it with <i> and add the suffixes.
The student then writes the new words, with the adjustments, into their book.
Irregular past tenses Another vocabulary deficit I see quite often is the ability to recall irregular past tenses. Many of my students need explicit teaching in this. Irregular past tenses are past tense verbs formed by a process different from simply adding the –ed suffix. For example, run becomes ran, eat becomes ate and bet remains the same as bet. Because irregular past tense formation is mostly learned through observation, trial and error, typically developing children need little, if any explicit instruction in it. However, those with language disorders tend to lag behind in their knowledge of irregular past tenses. The good news is, it doesn’t seem to take very much instruction and practice in most cases to correct this. I use a simple list of common irregular verbs and go through it as part of the weekly lesson with all students. I say part of a sentence and they have to complete it with the correctly formed verb: “Today I run, yesterday I…” If they don’t know the word, I make a note and set it to practise for homework. I then check during the next session. I usually have a working list of five verbs for practice at a time. There are many readily available irregular verb lists on the internet.
The days of the week The days of the week are named after Norse gods and things in the sky. I teach this and get students to try and figure out which god/heavenly body each day refers to. Fortunately for us, there are many movies and TV shows these days all about the Norse gods. Monday: named after the moon. We lost an <o> somewhere in translation, but nobody minds.
Tuesday: That day belongs to Tyr, the one-handed Norse god of law and heroic deeds. His name changed through the ages and languages, from Tyr to Tiwar and finally gave us the tue- in Tuesday. Wednesday: This day was named after the chief of all the gods – Odin. In old English, he was known as Woden, which gave us such an awkward spelling of Wednesday. It was Woden’s day originally. The most effective way to remember that spelling is to clearly say the three parts: ‘wed-nes-day’. Thursday: Children are always good at theorizing who this day belonged to. Of course, the god of thunder – Thor! Thursday is Thor’s day. Spelling tip - There are two days of the week that have an /ɜ:/ sound in them: Thursday and Saturday. Both sounds are spelled with the least common spelling of that sound: the letters <u> and <r>. Friday: Odin had a wife called Frigg, and Friday is her day. She was the goddess of wisdom. Saturday: This day is often intuited by the students and is, of course, named after Saturn. Sunday: Everyone knows this one. The sun gave us its name.
