Mary Kearney Briggs

The journals were passed out at the start of each session.  The vocabulary journals were personalized on the first day and used in a “getting to know you” activity.  Students were instructed to introduce one another and state a quality that described that person.  This activity continued until all students had a personalized journal.  Students were encouraged to write down words they found interesting and/or would like to incorporate into their writing.  I explained that through exposure and practice with rich words, word play, and word origins, students would build their vocabulary, to help improve their writing.  The students were also encouraged to record rules for spelling, as this would enhance their understanding of words and improve the quality of their writing as well.  Additionally, in order to see if students had any trouble at syllabic junctures in their spelling of words, I administered a Words Their Way (Stygles, 2011, p. 61) pre-assessment spelling inventory to gauge the readiness of the students in adding affixes to roots and bases.. This assessment was only used to assess any problems students might have with adding affixes in order to guide instruction and was not used for data collection. 

The students were instructed to use the journals as much as they felt necessary in recording words during the course of the lesson.  They were also encouraged to pass the journals in at the end of the lesson for corrections in spelling and for teacher feedback regarding the words they used in their journals.  

In addition to recording words in their vocabulary journals, students were encouraged to submit rich words to a chart known as the “word collector,” where words were alphabetically displayed on a poster at the front of the classroom.  These activities had no time allotment set for them as they were moments in learning that happened spontaneously during the lessons.  Encouragement regarding discourse about words is the incidental aspect of word learning was an important part of this instruction.   

The overall goal for the initial part of the intervention was to focus on word learning strategies, activities, and scaffolded instruction that would foster independent word learning.  Since the focus of the study was on building vocabulary by way of instruction on word parts and morphology, the scaffolded instruction continually built on learning the meanings of affixes, roots, and base words, the rules for adding affixes to roots and bases, and mapping words according to word families.  Students were encouraged to use these strategies when unknown words were encountered during independent reading. Through the implementation of incidental and intentional instruction using vocabulary journals, worksheets, the “Word Collector”, word maps, vocabulary games, read-alouds and classroom discourse involving rich words and word origins, these fourth-grade students had greater exposure, awareness, and consciousness about words, and an increased word bank at their disposal for writing.  

Once the groundwork for word learning had been completed, scaffolded word learning and word-learning strategies were continued as students internalize new vocabulary. Interventions for best practices in narrative writing were incorporated according to the format for analytical trait writing, using the 6 + 1 Traits writing model. This provided guidelines for what each trait suggests for good writing, as well as levels that are not considered good writing according to the rubric.  The concept behind each trait was explained.  The students were given samples of writing to look at and analyze. The language of trait writing was encouraged and scaffolded during these introductory lessons and at every opportunity when writing was discussed.  Samples from read-aloud texts were used as samples of writing, also known as mentor texts.   Since the focus is on vocabulary, we looked particularly closely at word choice, and how it enhanced the quality of the writing samples.  

The intervention in word learning began with an explanation of the goal of each lesson.  The goal was to help the students become more conscious and excited about words with instruction in word origins; rich, descriptive words; and what the words represent.  After the vocabulary journals were distributed on the first day, the next 30 minutes of the lesson was spent presenting and discussing a visual example (words and pictures), representing the words English, language, and arts.  Each word was discussed, along with the history of language, how language develops, and how different languages become “blended” together and incorporated with some foreign words.  An explanation was given as to how our brains learn to “chunk” letters together to understand words, phrases sentences, and stories.  A discussion followed on the creative arts and the concept of expression, linking the concept of expression with the concepts of communication and language.  To transition into the next lesson involving a 40-minute strategy instruction on synonyms, antonyms, and homophones, and how they are used in a sentence, the students were introduced to the word synonym, and asked if the students knew the meaning of the word.  A brief discussion of syllables and how they are accented was incorporated into this lesson, as many rich words are polysyllabic. For example, in the case of homographs, accentuation changes the tense and the meaning of the word.  As stated previously, for each new term introduced, a discussion of the word’s origin and definition was included.  I explained again that we were going to break down words to find their meanings.  This was the beginning of instruction in word origins and the morphological analysis of words.

Other activities that were included as part of these minilessons to enhance word exposure, word consciousness, and word play included, use of materials from the skills building books listed under the description of materials section.  Writing activities included sentence building activities, sequencing, and trait analysis of writing samples.  At the end of each 2 and ½ hour session I often ended with a read-aloud, provided there was time.  I chose the book Home of the Brave by Katherine Applegate to read at the end of the day.    This end-of-the-day activity helped to wrap up the lesson and aided in students’ transitioning to getting ready to leave for the day.  The read-aloud include discourse on words and concepts in the text as well.  Students were encouraged to ask about any words they did not understand or concepts with which they were not familiar and to write these words in their vocabulary journals.  These words could be revisited several times in order for students to internalize their meaning and the concept.