Build Academic and Domain-Specific Vocabulary to Access Content “Domain-specific academic vocabulary consists of relatively low-frequency, content- specific words that appear in textbooks and other instructional materials; for example, apex in math, escarpment in geography, and isobar in science” (Blachowicz and Fisher, 2011). Knowing that a robust vocabulary predicts reading comprehension, it is essential that we do all that we can to help our students grow their understanding of vocabulary related to specific domains of content. As children’s vocabulary grows, it bolsters their reading comprehension (Duke and Carlisle, 2011). Duke cites the high correlation (0.86) between academic vocabulary and comprehension and offers several strategies that students can use again and again to lock down the meaning of more sophisticated content words, including relating words to themes and to other similar words. These word associations help build networks of meaning that support reading comprehension. Of course, within thematic text sets, vocabulary is automatically related. Students encounter the same set of thematically related words across each text set, enabling them to more easily absorb and assimilate the new words. Approach Complex Texts To grow and achieve the goals of higher reading standards, our students must read extensively and intensively—especially authentic literature that offers them new language, new knowledge, and new modes of thought. Close reading—which text sets promote—is a key strategy. Kylene Beers and Bob Probst (2013) explain close reading: Close reading should suggest close attention to the text; close attention to the relevant experience, thought, and memory of the reader; close attention to the responses and interpretations of other readers; and close attention to the interactions among those elements. A close reading is also a careful and purposeful rereading of a text. It’s an encounter with the text where students are able to focus on what the author had to say, what the author’s purpose was, what the words mean, and what the structure of the text tells them. We provide text-dependent questions—and encourage our students to reread with their own questions in mind—which require our students to return to the text and search for answers. These aren’t the old-fashioned recall questions in which students simply search for the facts. These are questions that prompt students to consider the text and the author’s purpose, as well as the structure, graphics, flow of the text, and the reader’s own response to it (Beers and Probst, 2013, 2017; Fisher, Frey, and Lapp, 2012; Lehman, 2013; Robb, 2013).
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