Creating a culture of vocabulary acquisition for children living in poverty

Abstract

This paper presents a compelling case for early and sustained vocabulary development for children reared in poverty. Research findings indicate that vocabulary knowledge is a critical factor in literacy and academic success for low-income children from preschool to higher levels of schooling. Vocabulary proficiency is strongly related to language and reading understanding and to success in academic subjects, particularly when topics are presented with semantically laden words related to conceptual knowledge. Practitioners learn which words to emphasize in the continuum range of high frequency/high utility to rare words and why conversation, discussion, book readings, morpheme and root word play, and writing become so important in the learning of new words. Presented are four broad suggestions relating to (1) using enhanced talk in the classroom, (2) capitalizing on the rich vocabulary of children's book authors, (3) manipulating morphemes with word roots, and (4) developing the vocabulary of informational topics. Practitioners can readily implement these suggestions in their own classroom contexts, thereby creating positive climates of vocabulary acquisition for children with low and meager receptive and productive vocabularies.

Primary Discourse and Expressive Oral Language in a Kindergarten Student

“…Participation in the study was not restricted by factors such as gender, SES, ethnicity, or race. Parameters were not placed on SES because previous research in the area of vocabulary revealed a disparity in vocabulary growth and knowledge among low‐SES children (Farkas & Beron, ; Gottfried, ; Hart & Risley, ; Sinatra, ); therefore, it was probable that the participant would in all likelihood be a child of low‐SES given the low expressive language criteria. Low expressive/receptive oral language was determined by school‐administered kindergarten screenings prior to the start of the school year, including Kindergarten Screener—2010–2011, Preschool Boehm, the Bracken Basic Concept Scale subtest seven “Self‐/Social Awareness,” Clay's An Observation Survey of Early Literacy Achievement subtest “Letter Identification” with a second administration of Letter Identification focusing on letter–sound associations, DIBELS, and the Phonological Awareness Test.…”

“…Additional findings in Hart and Risley's studies demonstrated relationships between children's vocabularies and their family's SES. Overall, low‐SES children had smaller vocabularies than children in professional families did (Hoff, ; Huttenlocher, Vasilyeva, Waterfall, Vevea, & Hedges, ; Murray, Fees, Crowe, Murphy, & Henriksen, ; Pungello, Iruka, Dotterer, Mills‐Koonce, & Reznick, ; Sinatra, ). Hart and Risley's () work produced a developmental trajectory of cumulative word experience by the age of 4.…”

“…The academic language employed in the social institution known as school is counterintuitive to the primary language spoken by many children prior to their formal school experience, particularly for children from low‐socioeconomic status (SES) families (Gee, ; Genishi & Dyson, ). Numerous studies reveal the disparity in vocabulary growth among young students from low‐SES families and their more affluent peers (Farkas & Beron, ; Gottfried, ; Hart & Risley, ; Sinatra, ). Furthermore, research conducted in the realm of vocabulary knowledge has demonstrated the relationship between word knowledge and reading competence (Beck & McKeown, ; Bradley & Caldwell, ; McKeown, Beck, Omanson, & Perfetti, ; McKeown, Beck, Omanson, & Pople, ; Nagy & Scott, ; Ricketts, Nation, & Bishop, ).…”

Making the tacit explicit: children's strategies for classroom writing

“…… Children in the classes of these teachers were thus much more heavily involved in problem solving and theorising about language for themselves rather than simply being given “facts” to learn.’ Blachowicz et al . () use the term ‘semantic relatedness’ to describe this ability to consider how words and concepts are related, and Sinatra (, p. 176) argues that certain strategies can be applied to aid such relatedness in children, leading to more competent writers and an increased ability to deal with a wider variety of writing tasks. Along these lines, Wergerif et al .…”

4-6 Yaş Çocukların Sözcük Dağarcıklarının Ailesel Faktörlere Göre İncelenmesi

“…Sözcük dağarcığı yeni kavramları öğrenme, etkili iletişim kurma, fikirleri açıklama, önceki bilgileri kullanabilme gibi birçok iletişim becerisi için kullanılması gereken çok önemli bir öğedir (Sedita, 2005). Sözcük dağarcığı, bir insanın bildiği, anladığı ve kullandığı sözcüklerin tümü (Vardar, 1998;Akyol ve Temur, 2007), sözcüğün anlamını bilme ve sözcüğü uygun bir şekilde kullanabilme becerisi (Nguyen ve Khuat, 2003;Sinatra, 2008) olarak tanımlanmaktadır.…”