1. Vocabulary and Grammar Instruction with Engagement and Purpose
An Online Professional Development
Seminar
with Amy Benjamin

2. All slides are available for your classroom use:

3. Session I: November 3, 2016
I The Basics of Vocabulary Instruction:
What works? What doesn’t?
How do words get learned and stay
learned?
II Morphology Charting
A simple but effective way to teach
nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs
while extending vocabulary knowledge

4. Authentic communication with new words used in rich context
Let’s think about how words get learned
and stay learned.
These are all ways we learn words.
Which 5 do you think are the most durable?
Authentic communication
with new words used in
rich context
As you look at these various kinds of language experiences in the lives of students, think about which of these is most likely to result in vocabulary growth that will stick?
<Animation 1: gray box about authentic communication>

5. Polling Q: Vocabulary is strongly correlated with:
a. reading comprehension of unfamiliar text
b. standardized tests in all subject areas
c. formal and informal measurements of intelligence
d. understanding and retaining concepts
e. all of these

6. What thoughts come to mind when you hear the words “vocabulary lesson”?
<supplementing chat>
Being able to communicate is only one benefit
of knowing a word: knowing a word allows you to
access and crystalize a concept: allows you to think;
organizes information in your brain
Yet, vocabulary instruction is usually side-lined,
disconnected add-on from the kind of thinking that
students need to do in school.
Ineffective teaching practices result in little or no
actual vocabulary growth.

7. Picture a typical vocabulary list. How are the words organized
Picture a typical vocabulary list. How are the words organized? How were the words chosen?

8. When was the last time you looked up a word in the dictionary
When was the last time you looked up a word in the dictionary? What were the circumstances?

9. Effective Vocabulary Instruction Depends on the 4 E’s, anagrammed below:
Eesurpxo
Exposure: Elevate your language when you speak in class
Ennoilaatxp
Explanation: Provide ample information about a word;
Exceed brief definitions
Emslxpea
Examples Give several examples and non-examples,
especially ones that evoke a visual image
Esshmaiunt
Enthusiasm Demonstrate your own excitement and
interest in words; model yourself as a learner

10. c) Use flashcards to drill words and definitions.
Polling Q:Which one of the following would be the MOST effective way to teach a word and make it stay learned?
a) Give a vocabulary test every Friday, based on words presented on the previous Monday.
b) Teach a single word in depth, providing a cluster of words that are related in meaning and structure.
c) Use flashcards to drill words and definitions.
d) Give students matching columns with words and definitions
POLL

11. Swiss cheese soup, the soup de jour, Is chronically elusive.
Attempts to twist it on a spoon
Have proven inconclusive.
Swiss cheese soup is slimy goop.
Its contents are elastic.
It consists of bacon bits,
And tastes like melted plastic.
The slurping up of Swiss cheese soup
Results in much chagrin.
One cannot help but notice
Stubborn strands around one’s chin.
The act of eating Swiss cheese soup
Is whimsical and scary.
It’s not for the fastidious
And not for the unwary.

12. Swiss cheese soup, the soup de jour, Is chronically elusive.
Attempts to twist it on a spoon
Have proven inconclusive.
Swiss cheese soup is slimy goop.
Its contents are elastic.
It consists of bacon bits,
And tastes like melted plastic.
The slurping up of Swiss cheese soup
Results in much chagrin.
One cannot help but notice
Stubborn strands around one’s chin.
The act of eating Swiss cheese soup
Is whimsical and scary.
It’s not for the fastidious
And not for the unwary.

13. Knowing a word is not an “all or nothing” thing.
Strangers?
Friends?
Acquaintances?
Knowing a word is like knowing a person. Not an all-or-nothing thing.
Some words are strangers, meaning that
they are completely unfamiliar. Others
are acquaintances, meaning that we have
some familiarity with them. Others are
friends, meaning that we know them and
use them. <go to chat>
How does a word acquaintance become a word friend?
Three ways: (same as a person goes from being an
acquaintance to being a friend)
1. Spend time (repeated exposure)
2. Get to know (word components: prefixes, roots)
3. Have fun: word games and puzzles
fastidious
chagrin
inconclusive
elusive
soup du jour
elastic

14. inconclusive unwary fastidious
Should I spend time teaching this word explicitly?
Three Questions:
How useful is this word? Will students be likely to encounter it again
soon? Is it necessary for comprehension?
Will teaching this word explicitly equip the students with word-learning
skills that can be applied to other words?
3. Am I enthusiastic about this word? Can I make it interesting?
To comprehend text, the reader needs to know 95% of the words.
Next, we’re going to look at two models for explicit instruction that results in durable learning of the target word.
inconclusive
unwary
fastidious

15. inconclusive
unwary
fastidious
wary
conclusive

16. Morphology Chart Attempts to twist it on a spoon
Have proven inconclusive.
NOUNS:
They will fit into this frame: The_____.
VERBS:
They will fit into this frame:
To____ or
Can____or
Is____
ADJECTIVES:
They will fit into this frame:
The ________truck or
The truck is very _____.
ADVERBS:
They will fit into this frame:
Do it ___________.
(the) conclusion
(the) conclusions
(I) conclude.
(He) concludes.
(She is) concluding.
(Yesterday, we)
concluded.
conclusive
inconclusive
conclusively
inconclusively
Nouns answer the question: What? or Who?
Verbs answer the question: What is it doing, having, feeling, or being?
Adjectives answer the question: What kind? (They may also answer the questions Which one? and
How many? but those kinds of adjectives do not fit into
the frame of The______truck.
Adverbs answer any of these questions: Where? When? Why? To what extent? How?

17. It’s not for the fastidious.
Morphology Chart
It’s not for the fastidious.
NOUNS:
They will fit into this frame: The_____.
VERBS:
They will fit into this frame:
To____ or
Can____or
Is____
ADJECTIVES:
They will fit into this frame:
The ________truck or
The truck is very _____.
ADVERBS:
They will fit into this frame:
Do it ___________.
(the) fastidiousness
fastidious
fastidiously
Nouns answer the question: What? or Who?
Verbs answer the question: What is it doing, having, feeling, or being?
Adjectives answer the question: What kind? (They may also answer the questions Which one? and
How many? but those kinds of adjectives do not fit into
the frame of The______truck.
Adverbs answer any of these questions: Where? When? Why? To what extent? How?

18. Morphology Chart beware aware, awareness unaware, unawareness
…and not for the unwary.
NOUNS:
They will fit into this frame: The_____.
VERBS:
They will fit into this frame:
To____ or
Can____or
Is____
ADJECTIVES:
They will fit into this frame:
The ________truck or
The truck is very _____.
ADVERBS:
They will fit into this frame:
Do it ___________.
(the) wariness
(the) unwariness
wary
unwary
warily
unwarily
Nouns answer the question: What? or Who?
Verbs answer the question: What is it doing, having, feeling, or being?
Adjectives answer the question: What kind? (They may also answer the questions Which one? and
How many? but those kinds of adjectives do not fit into
the frame of The______truck.
Adverbs answer any of these questions: Where? When? Why? To what extent? How?

19. Morphology Chart They will fit into this frame: The_____.
NOUNS:
They will fit into this frame: The_____.
VERBS:
They will fit into this frame:
To____ or
Can____or
Is____
ADJECTIVES:
They will fit into this frame:
The ________truck or
The truck is very _____.
ADVERBS:
They will fit into this frame:
Do it ___________.
Nouns answer the question: What? or Who?
Verbs answer the question: What is it doing, having, feeling, or being?
Adjectives answer the question: What kind? (They may also answer the questions Which one? and
How many? but those kinds of adjectives do not fit into
the frame of The______truck.
Adverbs answer any of these questions: Where? When? Why? To what extent? How?

20. Morphology Kit -ment -ness -ation, sion -ity -ism -hood -itude -ence
This “Morphology Kit”
is a great way to
expand vocabulary
because most
of the words
created by
these suffixes
express abstract
ideas.
Noun-Making Suffixes
Verb-Making Suffixes
Adjective-making suffixes
-ment
-ness
-ation, sion
-ity
-ism
-hood
-itude
-ence
-ance
-ide
-ate
-ify
-ize
-acious,icious -y
-ous, ious
-ant
-able, ible
-er; est
Adverb-making suffix:
-ly 5

21. Noun: Owner’s Manual
Congratulations on your wise purchase of a NOUN. Your NOUN may be used to fit into the following frame:
The____________.
Your NOUN is used to name people, places, things, ideas, qualities, states of mind, and all kinds of other things that need naming.
Your NOUN may be easily converted into an adjective. All you have to do is put another NOUN after it and have it make sense. (COW pasture, for example).
Your NOUN may be the kind of NOUN that can be made plural. Only NOUNS may be made plural.
Your NOUN may be able to be made possessive by adding ‘s. Only NOUNS may be made possessive. When you make your NOUN possessive, it becomes an adjective.
You may add all kinds of modifiers before and after your NOUN. You may replace your NOUN along with its modifiers with a pronoun.
Feel free to use your NOUN as a subject, direct object, indirect object, object complement, object of a preposition, appositive, or predicate noun
Your noun may be called a nominal when we consider it together with its modifiers.

22. Adjective: Owner’s Manual
Congratulations on your wise purchase of an ADJECTIVE. Your ADJECTIVE may be used to fit into the following frame:
The______________truck. Or The truck was very_________.
Your ADJECTIVE likes to answer the question What kind?
If your ADJECTIVE doesn’t fit into either of these frames, maybe it is the kind of ADJECTIVE that answers the questions Which one? or How many?
Your ADJECTIVE may be capable of using the suffixes –er in the comparative form and –est in the superlative form. (If your ADJECTIVE doesn’t like these suffixes, just use more and most to accomplish comparison or superiority.)
Your ADJECTIVE reports to your NOUN, and your NOUN can easily become an ADJECTIVE to another NOUN.
Often, groups of words decide to get together and do ADJECTIVE-like work. We call such groups of words ADJECTIVALS, and they may be phrases or clauses that operate just like ADJECTIVES, answering those questions that ADJECTIVES answer.

23. Verb: Owner’s Manual
Congratulations on your wise purchase of a VERB. Your VERB may be used to fit into the following frame:
To______________.
Your VERB is the part of the sentence that is capable of turning the sentence into a negative. It is also the part of the sentence that changes when you add yesterday or right now. (If your sentence does not change when you add yesterday to it, then your sentence is in the past tense. If your sentence does not change when you add right now to it, then it is in the present tense.)
Your VERB may be an action verb or a linking verb. Action verbs may take direct objects and are modified by adverbs. Linking verbs take predicate nouns and predicate adjectives. You can easily find a list of linking verbs.
Your VERB may take auxiliaries (forms of have, be) and modal auxiliaries (could, should, would, can, will, shall, may, might, must).
Your VERB sometimes uses a form of the word do to create a sentence, to emphasize, to negate, or to stand in for itself, as in: Do you think so? Yes, I do.

24. Adverb: Owner’s Manual
Congratulations on your wise purchase of an ADVERB. Your adverb may be used to tell where, when, or how.
Adverbs that tell where may be replaced by the word there: We drove south for two miles. (We drove there for two miles.)
Adverbs that tell when may be replaced by the word then: We ate lunch late.
(We ate lunch then.)
Adverbs that tell how often end in –ly and may be replaced by the words like this: He joined the team eagerly. (He joined the team like this.)
You may move your adverbs around in the sentence. If you do, you’ll want to
set them off with commas.
Often, groups of words decide to get together to do ADVERB-like work, and when they do, we call these groups of words ADVERBIALS. ADVERBIALS may be phrases or clauses that do the work that adverbs do.

26. My Noun Palette Proper Nouns: Concrete Nouns: Abstract Nouns:
-tion,-sion,-ism,-ence, -ance,
-ness, -ment, -itude

27. How do we make vocabulary learning
engaging and fun?
Change picts
Talking Points:
Some numbers: A kindergarten-ready
child enters school with a vocabulary of
approximately 3,000 words. To be college
and career ready, she needs to grow her
vocabulary by 8 words a day. Children with
significantly fewer than 3,000 words need
aggressive intervention, or their deficits
will reveal themselves beginning in the
4th grade, when language becomes more
abstract.

28. How to Play: Try to put together the designated number of words for each board.
To reorganize the word parts, click. There are three versions for each
board.
Why Play: 1. Reinforce the concept of word components (prefixes and roots)
2. Elevate awareness of key supportive academic words, so that they will be used
3. Reinforce spelling

29. 13 Words
PORT
GRESS
SCRIBE RE A
PRE
CON
VERSE DE
VERT
TRANS

30. 13 Words
PORT RE A
PRE
VERT
TRANS
CON
SCRIBE
GRESS DE
VERSE

31. 13 Words
PRE
VERSE DE
SCRIBE
CON
TRANS RE
PORT
GRESS
VERT A

32. Answers: prescribe ascribe describe transcribe report deport avert
transport
revert
regress
transgress
congress
convert
converse
You can find more of these games on my website. They are free and ready to use.

33. Word Components
Match-Up
(Colors Must Match!)
cede
port
tract
con re re re re re
con
con
con re re
verse
ceive
con
tract
duct
cept re
ception
tain
ject
cession
tract
con
tain