WEBVTT

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Welcome to Explicit
Vocabulary Instruction

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for English Learners.

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My name is Jill MacKay, I am a
high school reading specialist

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at Stoughton High School.

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When I first came here
as a reading specialist,

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there were ELL students in
my regular reading classes,

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but we found that that kind

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of assistance was not
particularly helpful to them.

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They needed more direct,
explicit instruction.

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So last year, we formed a class
specifically for ELL students.

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I do work closely
with the ELL teacher

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to monitor their progress both

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in their ELL classes
and in my class.

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An intervention that I give is
explicit, direct instruction;

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I take vocabulary right
from the text that I know

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that they will be using and
pre-teach that vocabulary.

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I also will give them background
knowledge on a particular text

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if I feel that they
will not have that due

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to where they are from.

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The intensity of the
intervention is pretty high,

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mostly because the ELL
students that I work

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with are at low levels.

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I did a vocabulary lesson
on the open-ended vignettes

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of The House on Mango
Street by Sandra Cisneros.

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My goals were for the
students to be able

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to define the vocabulary,
for the students to be able

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to orally read the vocabulary
and the definitions accurately,

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and to use the vocabulary
in sentences.

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I started my lesson by
reviewing vocabulary

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that I had introduced
to the students.

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I had them copy the words
down in their notebooks.

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I pronounced each of
the words for them

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and read the definitions
to them.

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I would ask questions
of the students.

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Students would volunteer
information about what they knew

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about that particular
term already.

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I chose this book
because it is a book

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about a Mexican-American girl
who feels like she does not fit

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in where she is, and a lot
of my students feel that way

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about being here in America.

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It is written at a level
that I believe most

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of them will be able
to understand,

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particularly with my help.

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In selecting the vocabulary
words, I've become familiar

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with words that seem common
to me but are not common

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to my ELL students, and so I
chose words such as laundromat.

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And when I initially introduced
that word to them, they said,

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"Well, we don't call
it laundromat.

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We just call it laundry."

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And I said, "Well, now in this
book they call it laundromat,

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so you need to know
what that word is."

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I then had students use
those words in sentences,

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and I asked the students to
try not to use the definition

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or parts of the definition
in the sentences

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and to make the sentences
clear enough so that

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if it's someone else who
would read the sentence,

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they would be able to understand
what the definition was

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without knowing what
the definition meant.

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I've showed students pictures
of the vocabulary words.

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For instance, one

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of the vocabulary words
was the word 'nun,

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and I showed students pictures
of nuns, and I asked students,

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"what is this picture of?"

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And they would look at the
vocabulary words on the board

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and pick out the right
vocabulary word that went

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with the particular picture.

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I find that with ELL
students, in particular,

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you cannot just speak
to the students.

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You cannot just deliver
information orally to them.

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They need a visual.

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I try to give students
everything, either writing it

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on the board or giving them
handouts or demonstrating

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for them so that it's not
just me speaking to them.

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It's explicit instruction
that starts off with a lot

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of modeling from me but then is
scaffolded off to the students.

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To learn more about Explicit
Vocabulary Instruction

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for English Learners, please
explore the additional resources

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on the Doing What Works website.