Marigrace Wilson

Learning Disabilities Strategy

Name of the Article: Teaching Academic Vocabulary to Adolescents With Learning

Disabilities

Population: Students struggling with vocabulary.

Objective: Through explicit vocabulary instruction, students will learn tier 2 words through a
five-step intervention.

Age/Grade Level: Grade 3 and up.

Procedure:

Introduction: According to the article, “explicit vocabulary instruction is necessary to

improve students’ academic achievement in diverse classrooms where many students are
struggling readers whose word knowledge is especially limited”. However, it is in nearly
impossible to cover every word that we feel should be apart of a successful child’s vocabulary.
Therefore, the following intervention shows a system focusing on specific words to teach
struggling readers. Beck et al. suggests that words are classified into 3 tiers.

Summary: Tier One consists of common words used in everyday oral language. Even
struggling readers are likely to know tier one words, and if not, they can easily be explained by a
simple definition. Extended vocabulary instruction is not needed at this level, for they are not
considered academic vocabulary like the following tiers.

General academic vocabulary words, or Tier Two words, are important for understanding
academic texts across a large span of disciplines. Tier Three words are used when understanding
text in a particular content area, such as math or science. These domain specific words are
helpful; however, the tier two building focuses on improving students’ ability to understand a
wide range of academic texts, for “about 10% of the words in content area texts and 1.4% of the
words in literary texts are Tier 2 words (Coxhead, 2000); therefore, learning the meaning of
these words has the potential to improve students’ understanding of many texts they read.” As a
result, the 5-step intervention focuses on an explicit system of tier two building.

Step one consists of selecting four Tier 2 words to teach each week. These words may be chosen
from a variety of given word lists such as select words for instruction, including Coxhead’s
(2000) Academic Word List and Biemiller’s (2009) list of Words Worth Teaching. To maximize
student interest, it is also suggested to compare these lists to assigned weekly readings and
choose accordingly. The second step is to introduce the words in a student friendly way. This
includes not only using simple and relatable explanations, definitions, and synonyms for each
word but also to provide various representations of the word such as the spelling and phonetics.
Be sure to characterize the word by discussing how and why the word is commonly used. Next,
it is time to put the word in context through passages and facilitated discussions. Research
suggests that initial instructional contents should be at the sentence level when possible. Once
there is working knowledge of the target word, teachers can provide authentic representations of
the word. In addition, they can also move on to step four which prompts the teachers to engage
the students in word play. Word play consists of activities that allow the words to become
multidimensional through activities where students say and hear words with their definitions,
make decisions about the application of words, and fine tune their understanding through
discussions. For comprehensive examples of word play that apply to students of all levels, see
Beck et al. (2008, 2013). Finally, step five allows the child to practice their new words through
instructional routines around sentence writing. Initially, this should include scaffold writing
opportunities; however, they should progress to independent sentence making. The work of Beck
et al. (2008, 2013) and others offers a concrete framework for providing academic vocabulary
instruction, and the modifications recommended here ensure instruction is more accessible to
struggling readers and students with LD.

Possible Adaptations: I would like for it to include more direct instruction how to implement
the words. For example, a provided graphic organizer, worksheet, or multimedia could be
beneficial. This intervention could also be used in the general classroom, for it is beneficial to all
students.

Reflection: Overall, I liked the idea of grouping words into 3 tiers in order to help maximize
teaching. However, the intervention process listed is just a framework . This could be a
advantage or disadvantage. I personally like a checklist of things to do; however, others would
like this free range and have to ability to get creative with it. I did like how they used a sample
case to walk you through each step of the process.

Research: The authors did research to prove this method valuable. They included their
references and study results in the article.

Reference

Beach, K., Flyn, L., O’Connar, R., Sanchez, V. (2015). Teaching academic vocabulary to adolescents

with learning disabilities. Teaching Exceptional Children, 48(1), 36-44.