Using the Clarifying Cue Card at School
Teaching Kids Reading Comprehension Strategies for Unfamiliar Words
Oct 19, 2009
The best way to develop a rich vocabulary is to read widely. Teachers can only teach about 300-500 words a year, while an average student learns about 3000 words per year (Baumann and Kameenui, 1991. Research on vocabulary instruction: Ode To Voltaire. In J. Flood, J.J. Lapp, and J.R. Squire (Eds.), Handbook of research On teaching the English Language Arts (pp. 604-632). New York: MacMillan). An enormous amount of students’ vocabulary growth happens during independent reading.
Anderson and Nagy (1991) show that an average fifth grade student who reads 25 minutes a day will encounter about a million words per year. If 2% are unfamiliar, that would mean 20,000 new words a year. If the student learned just 5% of those words, that would be 1000 new words learned. ESL students encounter far too many new words. Second language learners need to be taught strategies to help them deal with all the new words they encounter.
How Students Learn New Words
Dale and O’Rourke (1986, Vocabulary Building. Columbus, OH: Zaner-Bloser.) have identifies four levels of word knowledge.
- Never saw if before
- Heard it, but doesn’t know what it means
- Recognize it in context, and can tell what it is related to
- Know the word well
According to Sebastian Wren, the “best approach to teaching vocabulary is to teach children some strategies for learning the meaning of words in context, and then encourage them to read voluminously and from a wide variety of texts and genres.” The clarifying cue card provides students strategies to use when they encounter difficult words. The strategies give all students a way to learn words on their own. The clarifying cue card is based on the one in Getting Into Words: Vocabulary Instruction that Strengthens Comprehension by Shira Lubliner [Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co., 2005].
The following are strategies ESL students can use to help with new words:
- Mime Your Memory: Students try to remember if they have seen the word before. Can they remember its meaning?
- Study the Structure: Do they know the root or base word? Is there a prefix or suffix? Is it a compound word? Students try to use clues in the word to help figure out its meaning.
- Consider the Context: Students look at the information in the sentence and the rest of the paragraph. Do the other words help them figure out the meaning?
- Substitute a Synonym: After students think they know what the word means, they should try putting a word with a similar meaning into the sentence. Does it make sense?
- Ask an Expert: Does someone else in the group know what the word means? The students can try to figure out the word together.
- Place a Post-it: If students still can’t figure out the meaning of the word, they can put a post-it by the word and look it up in the dictionary later. Students can also write the word into their own personal dictionary.
Each of these strategies helps students comprehend more new words on their own. It is especially useful for second language learners who frequently encounter unfamiliar words. The clarifying cue card strategies can be made into a bookmark for easy access. Teachers need to teach students how to effectively use each strategy. Then teachers need to provide a wide range of reading material for students to find their home run book. Once students discover their home run book and become avid readers, they will develop a rich vocabulary because as Sebastian Wren notes, “vocabulary size is both a cause of and a consequence of reading success.”
Reference:
Baumann, J.F. and Kameenui, E.J. (1991). Research on vocabulary instruction: Ode To Voltaire. In J. Flood, J.J. Lapp, and J.R. Squire (Eds.), Handbook of research On teaching the English language arts (pp. 604-632). New York: MacMillan.
Dale, E. & O'Rourke, J. (1986). Vocabulary building. Columbus, OH: Zaner-Bloser.
Nagy, W.E. and Anderson, R.C. (1984). How many words are there in printed English? Reading Research Quarterly, 19, 304-330.
Nagy, W.E., Herman, P., and Anderson, R. (1985). Learning words from context. Reading Research Quarterly, 19, 304-330.
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