Effective Vocabulary Instruction: The Backbone to Reading Comprehension
How important is vocabulary in enhancing reading comprehension? To answer this complex question read the following paragraph to yourself.The man leaned against the current as he waded, waist-deep, upstream. His hands steadied either end of the furnwunch balanced across his shoulders. He had moved about 90 yards from the denup where he had entered the stream. A few yards ahead, a part of the wooded bank had been replaced by an acnrid frud. He came abreast of it, and with effort, pressed the furnwunch up and over his head, and then set it on top of the frud. He placed his hands on his hips, pulled his elbows back and arched his back in an attempt to stretch out muscles that were knotted from the prolonged exertion.
How EDI Lesson Planning improves Learning – March 2015
Samantha Gibbons, Reading Specialist at Greenburgh Academy says, “Students in my self-contained class, ranging in age from 12 to 15, often find staying on task for an entire lesson a significant challenge. However, when I developed a lesson using the EDI Lesson Plan template, the students were engaged and excited the entire period. By the end of the lesson every student demonstrated mastery of the literary strategy that was taught!Supporting English Language Learners Through Language Objectives
What is a “language objective”? In Explicitly Designed Instruction for English Learners (2013, pp. 69-70), Hollingsworth and Ybarra describe language objectives as statements of how the teacher will intentionally advance the use of the English language during the lesson and further students’ language development through structured listening, speaking, reading, and writing activities. Echevarría, Vogt and Short in Making Content Comprehensible for English Learners (2012, pp. 33-34) recommend thinking about four major categories when creating language objectives: academic vocabulary; language skills and function; language structures or grammar; and language learning strategies. In other words, language objectives describe the vocabulary students will need to understand and use during the lesson; the language skills and functions students will need to engage in during the lesson; the language structures and grammar they will be expected to use; and the meta-cognitive strategies they will need to plan and monitor their learning.