Tiers of Vocabulary Revisited

Last week I taught my grade 6 intervention block about the Tiers of Vocabulary. They spent most of last week reading, analyzing, and discussing words. On Friday, I did a quick writing-to-show-understanding to assess where the students are in their understanding of the Tiers. I gave them two options:
1. Write a letter to a parent or one of your other teachers to tell them what you have learned about the Tiers of Vocabulary.
2. Pretend you are a Tier 2 word and write a letter to your Tier 3 friend explaining why you are a harder word.

My reflection on these assignments showed me several things. 1) The two options were not created equally. The second option really was harder to do and the students who tried it were not really able to show understanding of the tiers. 2) Once again, I failed to give the students clear criteria about what I was looking for. (See my fluency post for more about matching criteria to assessment.) 3) If this were my classroom of 10 years ago, I'd have given grades and moved on, though most of the students are not showing me that they understand the tiers on a higher order thinking level. Teaching is so much more rewarding when learning is the motivating factor, not grades.

So I once again went back to the drawing board. I realized I was looking for the students to be able to do three things: to explain the tiers and how to know which words fit which tier, to give example words for each tier, and to explain why it is useful to know the tiers of vocabulary. I read over their assignments and grouped them into three categories:
1. The students who still had some confusion or misconceptions about the tiers themselves.
2. The students who could explain the tiers but who were only picking examples we'd already discussed in class.
3. The students who had good explanations and gave examples, but didn't include why it is useful to catagorize words this way.

Today we created 3 stations to address the three groups. The students in group one started at station one and once they cleared up their explanations, could move on to station two: giving examples, and then to station three: the "why" station. At the end of the class, most of the kids were ready for station 3. I have three students to confer with tomorrow. I am going to give these three the opportunity to explain the tiers orally because the writing part of the assignment was getting overwhelming for them.

And while I had a couple who could give me some reasons why the tiers might be useful, none of them are all the way there yet. And that is due in part to the fact that so far, we've just been categorizing. Next week, we will go back to the Mysteries of Ancient Poop article and start to look at how we use context clues to determine the meanings of words.

The pink highlights are Tier 2 words, the blue are Tier 3. What I want the students to discover is that they will encounter more Tier 2 words in a text and Tier 2 words are much less often defined in context, while Tier 3 words are quite often defined in context. These are the reasons why it is also important for teachers to know the tiers. Content teachers often focus on their Tier 3 words, when it is usually the Tier 2 words that give readers the most trouble in terms of comprehension.

Here are a couple of students sharing their assignments. You can hear that they have a good basic understanding of the tiers. I am hoping over the next week, we can deepen that understanding for the whole class.

Re-assessing how I assess fluency

I've really been doing a lot of thinking about students becoming the architects of their own learning. I have begun incorporating learning targets and having students do some self-assessment on those targets.

An example of learning targets with stoplighting stickers. The students applied the stickers to indicate how they think they are progressing towards the targets.

What I noticed was that in terms of fluency, my students didn't have a clear picture of the criteria. And this is despite the fact that we use this rubric to talk about fluency:

I decided to put the rubric into a different format to see if I could break the criteria down better. I came up with our USIP Fluency House.

This is our class chart. Each student also has their own copy for their folders.

Our fluency house has four rooms. Today we focused on the speed room because that is mainly what they have been peer-assessing in the partner fluency checks. I broke the wpm down into a chart that let them know if they needed a lot of work, a little work, or if their speed was right on. The star colors signify this and I can tell at a glance how many students need to work on their speed. They put the appropriate color sticker on their personal fluency house as well, so I can see where individuals are just by looking in their folders.

The "speed" room close-up.

 Our next task will be to focus on the other rooms in the house. So far, I am the one best able to listening in order to assess using word phrases, intonation, and punctuation. But our plan is to find ways to audio or video tape each other so that the students can listen to themselves and their fluency partners to self- and peer-assess for those areas of fluency.

I am hoping that by breaking down fluency in this way, the students will be better able to create specific fluency goals for themselves and concentrate on their weak area. I also hope that this format will allow the students whose wpm is WAY above 150 to see that they may be reading too quickly and that their ability to use intonation or follow punctuation is being negatively affected by their speed.

Tiers of Vocabulary....with kids!

Last year I held an inservice for my middle and high school staffs about the Common Core State Standards. In going through the vocabulary standards, we spent some time talking about Elizabeth Beck's tiers of vocabulary. You can read in-depth about the tiers in Beck's book, Bringing Words to Life. In a nutshell (or a graphic organizer) here are the tiers described:

Most of our words fit in tier one. In tier three, the words are very specialized. We tend to encounter them infrequently. Tier two words can show up in any class. They are words we use more often in writing to make our writing "juicy" or more specific. Tier two is general academic language as well; words like analyze, synthesize, defend.

Can you tell from my graphic organizer that I decided to teach kids about the tiers of vocabulary? I began with the graphic organizer. Then I did an activity where I put Tier 1, Tier 2, and Tier 3 signs on three different tables (one sign per table.) I put a bunch of words on index cards, handed them out to the kids and telling them to go to it. I let them decide if they wanted to work alone or talk to others. Here's what the activity looked like:

Grade 6 girls debate whether a word should go on the Tier 2 table.

After the students were done placing their word cards, we stood at each table, starting with Tier 1 table. I asked the students to look over the words and make sure they agreed with all of them. Occasionally, they would want to debate one and we would sometimes leave the word, and sometimes move it. The students realized that some words might be able to fit in Tier 1 for one person and be a Tier 2 word for someone else.

The words the students put in Tier 3.

After this activity, we were ready to apply our new knowledge to a piece of reading. I chose an article from Dig magazine called The Mysteries of Ancient Poop. Cuz, seriously, what sixth grader doesn't want to read about poop!? The students really focused on vocabulary, pulling out Tier 3 words like archaeologist and coprolite (the scientific name for ancient poop!) and Tier 2 words like excavate and comparison. Their thinking was deep, their discussions about words were heated but respectful. It was so fun to watch them!

The students have realized the importance of focusing on Tier 2 words. They see that they are often harder to understand because they are often abstract words, while Tier 3 words are often long and hard to pronounce but represent concrete things. So next week, we will take some of their Tier 2 words and start to talk about context clues and what strategies we can use to figure out what these words mean.

It is so amazing to see their interest in words grow. To see them work with joy and excitement to analyze and talk about words. I can't wait to see what they figure out next!

ADDENDUM: Thinking about these vocabulary activities with a lens of formative assessment and triangulation of data (gathering student evidence through conferences, observations, and products) I was cognizant of being aware of the understanding of every student. The sorting activity allowed me to make great observations. I looked for evidence of understanding or confusion in their faces and body language. When I saw a student wavering between Tiers but working alone, I conferred with that student, asking questions like, "What are you thinking about that word?" or "What might be making you lean toward Tier 2?" And during the debrief when we all stood around tables, each student had the opportunity to explain the placement of a word. Their classmates listened and asked questions or made arguments to push their thinking, giving lots of peer feedback. Who needs summative assessments when you can gather all the evidence of success that you need formatively? :)