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Knowledge and Skills Statement

Response skills: listening, speaking, reading, writing, and thinking using multiple texts. The student responds to an increasingly challenging variety of sources that are read, heard, or viewed.

After presenting five new words to students, have them write short stories using the five words in context.
 

Further Explanation

This example allows a teacher to determine whether students can use five new words correctly in a short story. As students gain practice using new vocabulary in a specific task like writing short stories, they will be better able to provide a variety of responses using newly acquired vocabulary.

Students learn new terms not only to increase their vocabulary, but also to change the way they understand the world around them. Words are linked to certain domains and concepts. By using newly acquired vocabulary correctly, students can express the level of their understanding about objects, events and processes. Correctly using scientific terms such as conductor and insulator during a discussion of energy, for example, demonstrates that a student recognizes the qualities of these different categories. The use of specific vocabulary allows students to make more detailed analysis.
a familiar set of words within a person’s written and oral language; usually developed over time and serves as a tool to communicate and acquire new knowledge

Research

Collins, G. G., Goforth, A. N., & Ambrose, L. M. (2016). The effects on teacher professional development on rural students' lexical inferencing skills. Rural Special Education Quarterly, 35(3), 20–29. Retrieved from https://eric.ed.gov/?q=building+vocabulary+skills+in+fourth+grade&pr=on&ft=on&id=EJ1147344

Summary: The purpose of the study was to determine if a technology-based teacher professional development program could impact the lexical inferencing skills of fourth grade students in rural schools. Teachers learned specific methods for teaching vocabulary learning strategies. Results were not conclusive, but the study recommends increased teacher knowledge of vocabulary learning instruction, including collaboration between the classroom teacher and other school professionals, such as speech language pathologists as a partnership for identifying and remediating reading, particularly vocabulary, deficits.