Literacy
| Spring is always a busy time for teachers. The stretch between Spring Break and summer vacation is filled with state testing, field trips, schedule changes and trying to maintain academic focus while the warm spring weather beckons! Even with the fatigue of the long school year in full force, or perhaps because of it, spring is a great time of year to dig into some new learning to freshen up instruction for the final push. We all know how critical vocabulary knowledge is to reading comprehension, and good vocabulary instruction is engaging, collaborative and fun! This edition of the READ Act Literacy Updates Newsletter highlights some videos, podcasts, tools, and resources to breathe new life into your vocabulary instruction this spring. | Not ready to dig in right now? Our newsletters are archived for easy access. * Click here (Better yet, bookmark it!) to access both current and past newsletters!* | |
| **Watch and Listen ** | ||
| Dr. Anita Archer demonstrates a 2nd grade Read Aloud Vocabulary Lesson In this video Dr. Anita Archer demonstrates a vocabulary lesson using the book, Wolf! By Becky Bloom to second grade students. She demonstrates using student friendly definitions, her “Perky Pace,” and the use of sentence frames to understand three different vocabulary words. Her instructional steps were to introduce the word, provide a student-friendly explanation, illustrate the word with examples and check students’ understanding. There are more video examples from additional grade levels on Dr. Archer’s website: https://explicitinstruction.org/. | Vocabulary is unconstrained, with Tanya S. Wright** ** Amplify Science of Reading: The Podcast Dr. Wright, a former kindergarten teacher, provides tips and strategies for developing vocabulary. Dr. Wright also highlights how to integrate vocabulary, decoding, and writing to build vocabulary. Open the vocabulary gate to access comprehension and include all learners. Vocabulary instruction is important, even for young learners! **Amplify Podcast: No perfect set of words: Building vocabulary with Margaret McKeown ** Amplify Science of Reading: The Podcast Dr. McKeown discusses the importance of vocabulary instruction, highlighting the relationship between vocabulary and comprehension. Dr. McKeown also describes effective vocabulary instruction including how to assess vocabulary. Effective Vocabulary Instruction: Throw Away the Dictionary PaTTAN Literacy Symposium In this webinar as part of the 2022 PaTTAN Literacy Symposium, Michael Hunter focuses on strategies for beginning and ending vocabulary instruction effective in helping students better retain taught works in their lexicon. | |
| Read | ||
 Bringing Words to Life by Drs. Beck, McKeown, and Kucan is a practical guide to vocabulary instruction. The authors explain how to choose words for instruction and provide activities that promote vocabulary growth and comprehension. Did you know you can check out books from your local library through the Prospector program? Click Here to access Bringing Words to Life through Prospector. Text Talk Lessons Utah State Department of Education Created by a select group of educators during the Reading First initiative, these Text talk lessons were designed to support vocabulary and oral language development through vocabulary-rich read aloud experiences. Carefully crafted to highlight academic language, this compilation of lessons is an excellent resource to develop vocabulary knowledge and comprehension using well-loved children’s stories. The Core Vocabulary: The Foundation of Proficient Comprehension Elfrieda H. Heibert (Reading Teacher, vol. 73, no. 6, pp. 757-768) Most words students encounter in texts are part of a core vocabulary of 2,500 word families. This informative article explains how to use the core vocabulary to bolster instruction and ensure students have the vocabulary knowledge they need to comprehend text. |
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| **Resources ** | ||
| * Etymonline.com**: This website has information about the origin and history of English words. *** mylanguages.org This website provides information about multiple languages and includes information on grammar, vocabulary, and recordings of how to pronounce words. ***** Cognate List: English and Spanish Colorín colorado! Cognates are words that are similar in two languages. 30-40% of all words in English have a Spanish Cognate. * ******Vocabulary Lesson Template **** **This CDE provided Vocabulary Lesson Template can be used for lesson planning and ensuring that all critical parts of the lesson plan are included. The template provides guidance on choosing words to teach in-depth, providing a user-friendly definition, including examples of the word in context, and activities for students to interact with the unfamiliar word. *** Academic Word List **This list of 570 frequently used academic word, 343 of which are among the 4,000 simple word families, is an invaluable resource for supporting planning and instruction. * **Did you know that Emily Hanford’s report, *Sold a Story *****is now available in Spanish? ** This 10-part podcast series explores how reading curriculum based on faulty teaching methods in reading became so widely used and valued, and what has happened in recent years to correct the problem. | ||
| Summer Fun with CDE | ||
| Teaching and Learning CoLabs are locally hosted, multi-disciplinary events following a model developed and supported by the Colorado Department of Education. As the name suggests, these events are focused on teaching and learning and are designed for collaboration. Each one brings together stakeholders in K-12, higher education, Colorado's professional teaching organizations, and the Colorado Department of Education. The 2024 Teaching and Learning CoLab will be May 29-30 in Sterling, Colorado, at Northeastern Junior College. ***Click on this link for more information and to register: ***https://www.cde.state.co.us/colab | ||
| For More Information | ||
**Do you have a colleague with whom you would like to share these resources? ** **Feel free to forward the newsletter, or have them **sign up to receive the newsletter here! If you have general questions or need assistance, find our contact information here: ***http://www.cde.state.co.us/coloradoliteracy/contactus ***  |