April 11

The reading I chose to focus on this week was the Scott reading called Scaffolding Vocabulary Learning: Ideas for Equity in Urban Settings. I was drawn to this article because of the fact that it deals with urban settings. Because of my placement classroom and because I have heard a lot of stories from other educators in urban settings, I found this material to be relevant and interesting. Scott points out that in urban reform efforts the achievement gap in reading has received much attention and less attention has been given to the gap in knowledge of word meanings. Because word meaning is so closely related to reading and reading comprehension relies on vocabulary knowledge I think this is very important to address. I found it interesting that low-income 4th grade students were one year behind grade level norms and by 7th grade they were two years behind. Because my placement is in a 4th grade low-income classroom this really stood out to me. I think it is safe to say this is evident in my classroom and in my school, Wainwright Elementary, overall. There was one sentence in particular in this article that was really astounding to me and I still cannot stop thinking about. In a study mentioned in this article it was found that “on average 3 year old children of professional parents had a recorded vocabulary size greater than the parents of children on welfare” (Scott). This is such a shocking fact and it truly shows how large the gap is. The article points out that in order to change this; first and foremost, in these schools the type of informal vocabulary coaching in advantaged households must not only be mirrored but also intensified. In my placement class I have barely seen any vocabulary practice or instruction. The amount that I have seen is limited to writing words down and copying the definitions from the glossary of their textbooks. This is hardly sufficient and it is clear there needs to be much more vocabulary instruction in this classroom. The article then goes on to suggest many solutions such as building links, blending content learning and word learning, scaffolding writing with a focus on word choice, and using word play. One solution that stood out to me was the concept map with a specific word. This allows students to build links and connect this word to other things they know. The article used the word ‘racism’ as an example and in my literacy lesson I also addressed similar words such as ‘segregation’, ‘racism’, and ‘discrimination’. The students we able as a whole (group of 5 students) to make these connects and mentioned Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, boycotts, etc. I think it would have been beneficial to draw a concept map either individually or as a group so that students could visually see these connections and realize they all were related. Overall this article was insightful and I found the solutions and arguments to be interesting and relevant.