Vocabulary Across the Content Areas
Funded by the Tennessee Higher Education Commission
Dr. Kay Cowan, Project Director
June 18-22, 2007
Vocabulary: A Critical Component of Comprehension focused on inservice teacher professional development as a means to effect change in the middle grade classroom. Through a one-day Saturday workshop in April, a week-long workshop in June and on-going Blackboard support, thirty teachers have focused and will continue to focus on key strategies to enhance vocabulary development and extend student comprehension of text. The purpose of the professional development is to position teachers from high need LEA’s with the knowledge, skills, and enthusiasm to effectively address this critical instructional area. By extension, the purpose of the project is to improve student understanding of word knowledge, and hence to strengthen his/her ability to comprehend text. The delivery of the course was framed from a constructivist perspective: hands-on activities using a variety of arts-based literacy and current technology software will be used to explore and extend skills related to semantic mapping, the integration of vocabulary to other content knowledge, as well as the ability to make visual connections and to break words apart (i.e., prefix, suffix, root word knowledge). In addition to the use of current technology software, computer technology was also used to explore Internet sites relevant to the vocabulary extension activities studied. The class was aligned closely with assessed standards in literacy instruction; the strategies and techniques emphasized were drawn directly from the Blueprint Document. These same strategies were also connected to best practices in literacy instruction, as well as national standards. UTC and area school districts collaborated on this project.
