Student Achievement Results

By Author: Tracy McGrady
Total Articles: 55
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At the beginning of the study, we administered the vocabulary section of the GRADE (AGS Group Assessments, 2001), a standardized reading assessment, to establish that there were no significant differences between both classes. We then collected the scores from the six weekly teacher-developed tests containing two parts: writing word definitions and responding to meaningful use sentence prompts. For the last round of words, both groups studied the same words taken from the vocabulary workbook and then took the same test. We found no significant differences in scores between the two groups of students.

Two weeks after the end of this last lesson, we administered a delayed test of the last set of words without warning the students. When we examined the scores from the delayed tests, we found that students in the word Replica Tag Heuer wall class achieved higher scores on the application section of the test. While there were no main effects for group membership on the delayed definition measure, there was a main effect for the sentence completion measure, with ...
... the delayed test of sentence completion favoring the word wall instruction group. These students demonstrated a sustained higher level of understanding of the word meanings and were able to successfully apply them to the meaningful prompts. This more long-term, deeper level of understanding of vocabulary is the goal of vocabulary teaching and has the possibility of influencing reading comprehension.

The word wall itself does not teach vocabulary. However, as we have seen, this literacy tool holds potential for enhancing vocabulary learning with older learners when used in conjunction with effective instructional practices, such as visual coding, context applications, collaboration, and self-selection. Furthermore, encouraging the use of targeted words in a meaningful context—orally; graphically; and interactively, what Beck, McKeown, and Kucan (2002) called "rich" instruction—is a valuable instructional activity for use with word walls in all classrooms. It is critical that students encounter and use target words in multiple contexts to improve recall, understanding, and subsequent application. Finally, giving students a choice in what words they will learn enables them to feel a sense of control over their learning and Omega Replica Watches serves to motivate and sustain their interest in vocabulary-related tasks. While student self-selection of words is one way to generate words to study, we also recognize and support the use of teacher selection of words. Ultimately, all of these instructional elements lead to active engagement with the word wall, and it is through this active engagement that word knowledge is valued, increased, and deepened. The interactive word wall intervention illustrates the efficacy of word walls as a literacy tool for use with effective instructional practices to support vocabulary learning and teaching in middle and secondary school classrooms.