Hello! Today I asked Nicole to write a guest post. I know you’re going to love it because it’s all about vocab and EBP! Please make sure you visit Nicole’s blog and become a follower of her work. You won’t be disappointed! JennaHi there! It’s Nicole from over at Speech Peeps. So thankful for Jenna allowing me some time with you on her blog. I am constantly blown away by her ideas so it is quite a treat for me to be a guest on here.
Today, I want to talk to you about vocabulary strategies. Not just vocabulary strategies-but strategies that work. I know a lot of us out there are hearing those three little words:
evidence
based
practice
AHHH!
Let’s be honest. Hearing those words used to give me an ulcer. I would imagine a parent walking in saying: “Prove to me what you’re doing with my child is research-based.” Yikes!
So….I started doing my own research. Let’s call it…. “research on research.”
Guess what I found?!
I discovered that most of what I was doing with my students WAS researched-based. I just hadn’t had the articles in my hand to prove it. Let’s face it; we speech therapists don’t attend 6+ years of schooling for no reason! We usually know when something works and when it doesn’t.
I’ll bet most of the strategies that you’re doing with your kiddos are evidence-based as well. So….I thought I would pass on the research supporting them for you to have.
In this post, I will discuss 3 evidence-based strategies for working on vocabulary, provide you with the research I’ve found, and an activity.
Strategy #1
LINCS
You might have heard of this strategy. If not, click HERE for a more in-depth breakdown.
This strategy does take more time to teach fewer words, so I choose to use it for those more intensive interventions, or Tier 3 sessions. I also use this strategy with my middle school students using their core curriculum vocabulary. Here are a few beautiful samples from my students:
Research:
http://www.kucrl.org/sim/strategies/lincs.shtml Research results showed that in a social studies class in which the LINCS Vocabulary Strategy was taught to students, the students with LD performed at a mean of 53 percent in the pretest and at a mean of 77 percent correct answers after learning the strategy. In the control class in which students did not learn the strategy, the mean percentage of correct answers decreased from the pretest to the posttest.
Activity:
I created this general worksheet that goes along with LINCS that you can download HEREStrategy #2
Synonyms/Antonyms/Homophones
There’s a ton of research out there on using word relationships to build vocabulary…..AND I bet you’re already doing this.
Research:
California Department of Education Research Digest No 7: Evidence-based Reading Instruction (2007) (viewed 1 February 2009)
Beck, I., McKeown, M., & Kucan, L. (2002). Bringing words to life. New York: The Guilford Press.
Activity:
If you’re doing this already, I’m sure you have some activities. If not though, there’s tons of stuff out there including:
My Leveled Synonyms/Antonyms PackJenna’s Thanksgiving Language PackJenna’s Cars Uno: Multiple Meaning Words(Free!) Strategy #3
Using Context Clues
Using context clues to determine word meanings is also a great evidence-based strategy AND this one’s easy to implement.
Research:
Apthorp, H. S., (2006). Effects of a supplemental vocabulary program in third-grade reading/language Journal of Educational Research, 100(2), 67-79.
Baumann, J. F., Edwards, E. C., Boland, E. M., Olejnik, S., & Kame’enui, E. J., (2003). Vocabulary tricks: Effects of instruction in morphology and context on fifth-grade students’ ability to derive and infer word American Educational Research Journal, 40, 447-494
Clay, K., Zorfass, J., Brann, A., Kotula, A., & Smolkowski, K., (2009). Deepening content understanding in social studies using digital text and embedded vocabulary, Journal of Special Education Technology, 24(4), 1-16
Harris, M. L., (2007). The effects of strategic morphological analysis instruction on the vocabulary performance of secondary students with and without Dissertation Abstracts International Section A: Humanities and Social Sciences, Vol 68(4-A)
Activity
Simply reading a story and stopping to ask what a certain word means uses this strategy. I always remind myself to ask the student to locate the context clue….so that I know they “get it.”
I also made an activity to work on this as well: Context CluesPacket Using Tier Vocabulary Hope this post was reassuring that we ARE doing a lot of great things or provided some new ideas for you.
Thanks again!
Nicole Allison
Great post! I recently attended ASHA and confirmed that Slps have evidence based practice in our DNA! Lol. I think it would be great to have some more posts re: EBP …listening comp interventions and oral narratives.
We are definitely equipped-that’s for sure! I would love to see more out there too, especially in those areas. If you come across some neat things, please share!
LOVE this. I think we all do EBP too, it’s the name that is daunting to everyone. I feel like we got hammered with it in grad school! Great post Nicole!!
Thanks Jenn! It can definitely cause feelings of anxiety-and not only to us, but I think teachers feel nervous around those three little words as well. It’s a good thing SLPs can provide some techniques to teachers out there in our areas. 🙂
I LOVE LINCS 🙂 My middle school kids actually had a great time using it. I also invested in a little electronic dictionary for kids (http://www.amazon.com/Franklin-HW-1216-Childrens-Speller-Dictionary/dp/B0002OP81A), which gave them a kid-friendly definition of a word. This was great for the “definition” portion of LINCS. They loved using it for some reason, I’m sure there is a fun dictionary ipad app too, but I don’t have an ipad. HIGHLY suggested activity for the middle school SLPeeps out there!!
Love the idea of kid-friendly dictionary. It’s so hard to find a good one out there! I have a lot of success with LINCS but I have to remind myself I’m probably not going to get to 10 words in a session. Kids learn best by taking it slow and having lots of repetitions and different ways of words being presented-which is what LINCS is good at 🙂
Nicole, I loved your post!! So valuable. As a grad student, I was very much into EBP but now as a clinician finding time to keep abreast on research is a bit daunting. Your post and ideas were very welcomed. Gabriela, thanks for the friendly dictionary link!
Thank you! I completely agree that it gets harder as a clinician. It’s not that we’re not doing a lot of great stuff, it’s just that the research is hard to sort through. Thanks for commenting!
I was wondering what you use to for a weekly, monthy, end of the year assessment or if you use anything at all. This is my first year in the middle school and while we have been working on vocabulary using the Bridge to Vocabulary and are constantly going over synonyms, antonyms, multiple meanings, I want to know that how they are progressing. Any recommendations?
In order to target vocabulary goals, I have been using graphic organizers with my students in which they have to define the word, ID part of speech, provide an antonym and synonym and write the word in a sentence. However, I am having difficulty tracking data.I am using the vocabulary words from the students classroom ELA textbooks. The class does 8 words per week. I don’t know whether to track data on if they understand the vocabulary word completely or if they are able to perform the task(s) presented on the graphic organizer. I don’t always get to all 8 words in a week … How do you show progress when working on vocabulary?
Thanks so much for this! So many great useful ideas that I will be using straight away. I’d love a copy of the ‘general worksheet that goes along with LINCS’ but the link to the document isn’t working. Is there somewhere else that I could get this? Many thanks again!
Hi Jenna,
I’m having a hard time applying this to preschool. What researched based interventions do you have for 3 and 4 year olds? You can’t really do lincs with them, they can’t draw lol.
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Research:
http://www.kucrl.org/sim/strategies/lincs.shtml Research results showed that in a social studies class in which the LINCS Vocabulary Strategy was taught to students, the students with LD performed at a mean of 53 percent in the pretest and at a mean of 77 percent correct answers after learning the strategy. In the control class in which students did not learn the strategy, the mean percentage of correct answers decreased from the pretest to the posttest.
Activity:
I created this general worksheet that goes along with LINCS that you can download HERE Strategy #2
Synonyms/Antonyms/Homophones
There’s a ton of research out there on using word relationships to build vocabulary…..AND I bet you’re already doing this.
Research:
California Department of Education Research Digest No 7: Evidence-based Reading Instruction (2007) (viewed 1 February 2009)
Beck, I., McKeown, M., & Kucan, L. (2002). Bringing words to life. New York: The Guilford Press.
Activity:
If you’re doing this already, I’m sure you have some activities. If not though, there’s tons of stuff out there including:
My Leveled Synonyms/Antonyms Pack Jenna’s Thanksgiving Language Pack Jenna’s Cars Uno: Multiple Meaning Words (Free!) Strategy #3
Using Context Clues
Using context clues to determine word meanings is also a great evidence-based strategy AND this one’s easy to implement.
Research:
Apthorp, H. S., (2006). Effects of a supplemental vocabulary program in third-grade reading/language Journal of Educational Research, 100(2), 67-79.
Baumann, J. F., Edwards, E. C., Boland, E. M., Olejnik, S., & Kame’enui, E. J., (2003). Vocabulary tricks: Effects of instruction in morphology and context on fifth-grade students’ ability to derive and infer word American Educational Research Journal, 40, 447-494
Clay, K., Zorfass, J., Brann, A., Kotula, A., & Smolkowski, K., (2009). Deepening content understanding in social studies using digital text and embedded vocabulary, Journal of Special Education Technology, 24(4), 1-16
Harris, M. L., (2007). The effects of strategic morphological analysis instruction on the vocabulary performance of secondary students with and without Dissertation Abstracts International Section A: Humanities and Social Sciences, Vol 68(4-A)
Activity
Simply reading a story and stopping to ask what a certain word means uses this strategy. I always remind myself to ask the student to locate the context clue….so that I know they “get it.”
I also made an activity to work on this as well: Context CluesPacket Using Tier Vocabulary 
Hope this post was reassuring that we ARE doing a lot of great things or provided some new ideas for you.
Thanks again!
Nicole Allison
Research:
http://www.kucrl.org/sim/strategies/lincs.shtml Research results showed that in a social studies class in which the LINCS Vocabulary Strategy was taught to students, the students with LD performed at a mean of 53 percent in the pretest and at a mean of 77 percent correct answers after learning the strategy. In the control class in which students did not learn the strategy, the mean percentage of correct answers decreased from the pretest to the posttest.
Activity:
I created this general worksheet that goes along with LINCS that you can download HERE Strategy #2
Synonyms/Antonyms/Homophones
There’s a ton of research out there on using word relationships to build vocabulary…..AND I bet you’re already doing this.
Research:
California Department of Education Research Digest No 7: Evidence-based Reading Instruction (2007) (viewed 1 February 2009)
Beck, I., McKeown, M., & Kucan, L. (2002). Bringing words to life. New York: The Guilford Press.
Activity:
If you’re doing this already, I’m sure you have some activities. If not though, there’s tons of stuff out there including:
My Leveled Synonyms/Antonyms Pack Jenna’s Thanksgiving Language Pack Jenna’s Cars Uno: Multiple Meaning Words (Free!) Strategy #3
Using Context Clues
Using context clues to determine word meanings is also a great evidence-based strategy AND this one’s easy to implement.
Research:
Apthorp, H. S., (2006). Effects of a supplemental vocabulary program in third-grade reading/language Journal of Educational Research, 100(2), 67-79.
Baumann, J. F., Edwards, E. C., Boland, E. M., Olejnik, S., & Kame’enui, E. J., (2003). Vocabulary tricks: Effects of instruction in morphology and context on fifth-grade students’ ability to derive and infer word American Educational Research Journal, 40, 447-494
Clay, K., Zorfass, J., Brann, A., Kotula, A., & Smolkowski, K., (2009). Deepening content understanding in social studies using digital text and embedded vocabulary, Journal of Special Education Technology, 24(4), 1-16
Harris, M. L., (2007). The effects of strategic morphological analysis instruction on the vocabulary performance of secondary students with and without Dissertation Abstracts International Section A: Humanities and Social Sciences, Vol 68(4-A)
Activity
Simply reading a story and stopping to ask what a certain word means uses this strategy. I always remind myself to ask the student to locate the context clue….so that I know they “get it.”
I also made an activity to work on this as well: Context CluesPacket Using Tier Vocabulary 
Hope this post was reassuring that we ARE doing a lot of great things or provided some new ideas for you.
Thanks again!
Nicole Allison
21 Comments
These are great, thank you!
Shelley
Glad you liked them!
Great post! I recently attended ASHA and confirmed that Slps have evidence based practice in our DNA! Lol. I think it would be great to have some more posts re: EBP …listening comp interventions and oral narratives.
We are definitely equipped-that’s for sure! I would love to see more out there too, especially in those areas. If you come across some neat things, please share!
Thanks for a great post!
And I agree with Tamara, I’d love more posts on EBP!
LOVE this. I think we all do EBP too, it’s the name that is daunting to everyone. I feel like we got hammered with it in grad school! Great post Nicole!!
Jenn
Crazy Speech World
Thanks Jenn! It can definitely cause feelings of anxiety-and not only to us, but I think teachers feel nervous around those three little words as well. It’s a good thing SLPs can provide some techniques to teachers out there in our areas. 🙂
I LOVE LINCS 🙂 My middle school kids actually had a great time using it. I also invested in a little electronic dictionary for kids (http://www.amazon.com/Franklin-HW-1216-Childrens-Speller-Dictionary/dp/B0002OP81A), which gave them a kid-friendly definition of a word. This was great for the “definition” portion of LINCS. They loved using it for some reason, I’m sure there is a fun dictionary ipad app too, but I don’t have an ipad. HIGHLY suggested activity for the middle school SLPeeps out there!!
Love the idea of kid-friendly dictionary. It’s so hard to find a good one out there! I have a lot of success with LINCS but I have to remind myself I’m probably not going to get to 10 words in a session. Kids learn best by taking it slow and having lots of repetitions and different ways of words being presented-which is what LINCS is good at 🙂
Nicole, I loved your post!! So valuable. As a grad student, I was very much into EBP but now as a clinician finding time to keep abreast on research is a bit daunting. Your post and ideas were very welcomed. Gabriela, thanks for the friendly dictionary link!
Thank you! I completely agree that it gets harder as a clinician. It’s not that we’re not doing a lot of great stuff, it’s just that the research is hard to sort through. Thanks for commenting!
Great Blog!
I was wondering what you use to for a weekly, monthy, end of the year assessment or if you use anything at all. This is my first year in the middle school and while we have been working on vocabulary using the Bridge to Vocabulary and are constantly going over synonyms, antonyms, multiple meanings, I want to know that how they are progressing. Any recommendations?
Thanks!!
C
I did this with my high school class. I was GREAT! They loved it. The format was better than other ones I have seen.
Thank you!!! I am using these ideas with my language clients-just what I was looking for!
In order to target vocabulary goals, I have been using graphic organizers with my students in which they have to define the word, ID part of speech, provide an antonym and synonym and write the word in a sentence. However, I am having difficulty tracking data.I am using the vocabulary words from the students classroom ELA textbooks. The class does 8 words per week. I don’t know whether to track data on if they understand the vocabulary word completely or if they are able to perform the task(s) presented on the graphic organizer. I don’t always get to all 8 words in a week … How do you show progress when working on vocabulary?
Thank you so much for this post!!! Needed some EBPs for vocabulary! Very helpful.
Hi,
Why can’t I download the vocabulary graphic organizer?
Thanks so much for this! So many great useful ideas that I will be using straight away. I’d love a copy of the ‘general worksheet that goes along with LINCS’ but the link to the document isn’t working. Is there somewhere else that I could get this? Many thanks again!
Hi there! The internet link for LINCS does not work. Is there anywhere else I can find it? Thank you!
Hi Jenna,
I’m having a hard time applying this to preschool. What researched based interventions do you have for 3 and 4 year olds? You can’t really do lincs with them, they can’t draw lol.