Creating Robust Vocabulary: Frequently Asked Questions & Extended Examples

By Author: Barbara Carter
Total Articles: 9
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How would you explain robust What are examples of something that is robust What vocabulary practices might be termed robust Robust would be classified by Isabel Beck, Margaret McKeown, and Linda Kucan as a "Tier Two word," a word encountered infrequently in spoken language but which surfaces in written texts. Robust is a useful word, though unfamiliar or hazy to many adolescents, and is thus a candidate for instructional attention. So what would constitute a "robust" way of teaching robust?

In their earlier work Bringing Words to Life, Beck, McKeown, and Kucan (2002) distilled from a wealth of research the rationale for concerted and intensive classroom vocabulary practices. Yet the current instructional terrain around vocabulary learning can perhaps be summarized as, "We don't do much, and much of what we do doesn't work." Admittedly, it is not uncommon for teachers of adolescents Tag Heuer Replica Watches to express concerns with the state of their students' vocabularies, and many teachers who do emphasize building vocabulary acknowledge ...
... dissatisfaction with their results. But teachers may resignedly muddle on, continuing practices in which they may have lost faith, because we need to "do something" with vocabulary.

Bringing Words to Life outlined for teachers a clearly articulated blueprint for reconfiguring their vocabulary instruction. Two big ideas were the cornerstone of that work: targeting Tier Two words for explicit teaching and developing student-friendly explanations. Tier Two words represent the more precise and elaborative vocabulary of mature language users. Unlike Tier One words, which are relatively easy to learn due to their redundancy in spoken language, Tier Two words can be challenging for students because readers need repeated exposures in a variety of meaningful contexts to figure them out independently. Tier Two words are likely to affect reading comprehension in a wide range of written texts, in contrast to Tier Three words, which students encounter in classrooms as disciplinary-specific language. Student-friendly explanations represent a major departure from standard approaches to teaching vocabulary and extend far beyond the narrow definitions and dictionary-speak typical of classroom vocabulary work. Instead the teacher emphasizes "explaining" a word in everyday language, using varied and familiar examples to deepen understanding, and engaging students in experimenting with putting the word "in play" in multiple meaningful contexts.

Creating Robust Vocabulary was developed as a companion volume to Bringing Words to Life and continues exploration of instruction of Tier Two words. This new publication contains extensive instructional modeling that teachers will find immediately enticing. This resource, however, will likely have the Tag Heuer Carrera Replica greatest impact if paired with the first work—and if teachers initially examine Bringing Words to Life. As the authors note, this new work is a response to many of the issues and questions generated by Bringing Words to Life, and it intends to offer clarification, further discussion, and additional rich examples of high-quality vocabulary lessons. The two volumes together provide invaluable classroom resources for teachers.